THE
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
MAGAZINE
AN ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY
EDITOR
GILBERT H. GROSVENOR
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
MAJOR GENERAL A. W. GREELY ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
U. 8. Army Washington, D. C.
C. HART MERRIAM
Chief of the Bureau of the Biological Survey DAVID T. DAY
U. S. Department of Agriculture U. S. Geological Survey
WILLIS L. MOORE
Chief of the Weather Bureau. U. S. Department R. D. SALISBURY
of Agriculture University of Chicago
O TT TTTTIVT ANN
Superintendent of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic G- K- GILBERT
Survey U. S. Geological Survey
O. P. AUSTIN AT TP Y A "M T> T? T? TVfpAT">TT^
Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, Department X Professor of Meteorology, U. S. Weather Bureau
of Commerce and Labor gan Francisco
DAVID FAIRCHILD
Agricultural Explorer of the Department of ALMON GUNNISON
Agriculture President St. Lawrence University
ROBERT HOLLISTER CHAPMAN
U. S. Geological Survey
VOL. XIX-YEAR 1908
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY
HUBBARD MEMORIAL HALL
-WASHINGTON, D. C.
CONTENTS
Page-
In the Savage South Seas ; by BEATRICE GRIMSHAW i
Studies on the Rate of Evaporation at Reno, Nevada, and in the Salton Sink; by Prof.
FRANK H. BIGELOW, U. S. Weather Bureau 20
Methods of Obtaining Salt in Costa Rica 28
Dr Bell's Man-Lifting Kite 35,
More Changes of the Colorado River 52.
Honors for Amundsen 55
Recession of the Glaciers of Glacier Bay, Alaska; by FREMONT MORSE, U. S. Coast and
Geodetic Survey 75,
The National Geographic Society 7&
Policemen of the Air ; an account of the Biological Survey of the Department of Agricul-
ture ; by HENRY W. SHAW 79,
A Few Thoughts Concerning Eugenics ; by ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 119,
The Carnegie Institution I24
A Jumping Salmon I2
Children of the World
Ten Years in the Philippines I4I
A Bear Hunt in Montana; by ARTHUR ALVORD STILES, Topographer, U. S. Geological
Survey -
A Journey Through the Eastern Portion of the Congo State; by Major P. H. G. POWELL-
COTTON
In the Valley of the Niger [^
Marking the Alaskan Boundary
A Drowned Empire ; by ROBERT H. CHAPMAN.
Haiti: A Degenerating Island: the Story of its Past Grandeur' and Present ' Deca'y ;"by
Rear Admiral COLBY M. CHESTER, U. S. Navy
The Madura Temples; by J. S. CHANDLER.
The Bear Hunt
AEuzA RTc'iDMorE^1 ^^ Sandals f°r S^ 2
• 223.
Associate in
the Geological sur- in'^::
Along the Old Inca Highway; by HARRIET CHAL,MERS"ADAMS.' '.
Ho^e-Makmgby the Government; by C. J. BLANCHARD, Statistician,' U.' S.' Reclamation
'
to P ' 'fi u
to the Pacific; by Hon. GEORGE C. PERKINS. .
lawan for Homes ; by H. P. WOOD
fhy Nik-ko is Beautiful; by J. H. DE FORREST '.
Where East Meets West; by MARIAN C. COFFIN
^
309
345
f-i ° —•—"«-, Uj TT. j. . v^KiiiatjON /-
Conservation of Our Natural Resources
The Nome Gold Fields 384
Geographical Congress ....... 384
New Topographic Maps 385
386
CONTENTS
Page
One Season's Game Bag With the Camera; by Hon. GEORGE SHIRAS, 3RD. .
Peary's Polar Expedition ................................................ ™
Magnetic Survey of the Pacific ............................... ™
The North American Indian ............................ ^
Books Received ...........................................
The Magic Mountain ; by J. N. PATTERSON ..................... • • ....... • ..........
Notes on a Zoological collecting trip to Dutch New Guinea; by THOMAS BARBOUR ....... 469
Among the Mahogany Forests of Cuba ; by WALTER D. WILCOX ......................... 4«5
Notes and Scenes from Korea .............................................
Some Human Habitations ; by CowER COBB ........... . . . . . . . ............
Is Our Noblest Volcano Awakening to New Life ; by A. H. SYLVESTER .................. 5
Further Notes on Dutch New Guinea ; by THOMAS BARBOUR ..... ..... .. . . . . . . • • . . • •
The Pacific- the Most Explored and the Least Known Region of the Globe; by LEOPOLD
........................ 540
BLACKMAN ............................. • ..... ;•• fi
Biskra, the Ziban Queen; by Mrs. GEORGE C. BOSSON, JR ...........................
Location of the Sir John Franklin Monument .................. - .......... • • •
Some Wonderful Sights of the Andean F'.ghlands; by HARRIET CHALMERS ADAMS.
As Seen from a Dutch Window; by JAMES HOWARD GORE, Professor of Mathematics, ^
George Washington University ...................................................
Peasant Life in the Black Forest ; by KARL FREDERICK GEISER ........... • £35
How the World is Shod .......................................................
Ten Years of the Peary Arctic Club ; by HERBERT L. BRIDGMAN ............... . ........... «£
Cuzco, America's Ancient Mecca ; by HARRIET CHALMERS ADAMS ........ • • • • • • 009
Cork ...................................... ; .............. 5Q4
Across Widest Africa ; by A. HENRY SAVAGE LANDOR. ... ...... :'""''' '«' 'c'n'''' ' ' ™
Conservation League of America; by HENRY GANNETT, Geographer of U. S. Gel
Comparison of Our Unprotected with Our Protected Forests .......... . . . . . — ••••• ' •
The Ruined Cities of Asia Minor; by ERNEST L. HARRIS, American C o ^
Smyrna ........................................... ....... 760
Bulgaria, the Peasant State ................................ ^
Servia and Montenegro ........................................ 7QO
Notes on Macedonia .............................................. o^
The Oil Treasure of Mexico ; by RUSSELL HASTINGS MILLWARD ....... • • ^
National Geographic Society .............................. gop
In Quaint, Curious Croatia ; by FELIX J. KOCH ....... . . . ...... '.'"''' ' gr<
Some Ruined Cities of Asia Minor; by Consul General ERNEST L. HARRIS..
Our Neglected Southern Coast ; by AwfcSD GOLDSBOROUGH MAYER ........ • »
Scenes from the land where everybody dresses in white ....... ••••••• ^
Daniel Coit Gilman ......................................... ..... gg3
Whalebone ..................... • • ........................ ........ 885
An American South Polar Expedition ....................... ggg
National Geographic Society ....................................
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
3
V orYangg7n!'Jfrom which 'the intoxicating drink of heFiji Islanders is made. .
Vanilla plant and bean
Drying vanilla — Fiji
A Fijian in festival dress.
A Fijian in Sunday dress— Fiji • • • • — • • • • • • • •
Infant head-binding to make the h<
Malekula warrior— New Hebrides,
A .Fijian in ounuay urcsa — nji. .
Infant head-binding to make the head conical— New Hebrides
o
The women's dance
Dancing and singing ^
Bringing out the mummy from the "Kama!"
Typical idols in a New Hebrides village •
A notorious cannibal — New Hebrides
Poisoned arrows
In the yam fields— New Hebrides T3
Shooting fish— New Hebrides • J4
Tannese scar-tattooing — New Hebrides T5
Looking out for trouble
The allies coming in
Bushmen coming to see a white child T9
Fashions in Erromanga — New Hebrides J9
The Salton Sea and the Salt Creek trestle 21
Reno reservoir, tower No. 2 • 22
The five towers used in the evaporation experiments, Reno reservoir 25
Scenes near Reno, and the experimental towers 27
Obtaining salt at Caldera, Costa Rica 29
Provided with wooden spades, the peones gather the salted earth into long, narrow heaps . 30
The heaps thus made and the low water at the distance 30
Collecting the salted earth 31
Filtering out the salt 32
Vaporizing the salt solution 33
Weathering the salt 34
Practice drill with a small kite 35
Views of the aerodrome shed in which the giant man-lifting kite, the Cygnet, is housed. . 36
View of the aerodrome shed 37
The Cygnet placed on board the raft 37
Members of the Aerial Experiment Association 38
Front view of the Cygnet, showing the manhole in the center 39
Another view of the giant "Cygnet" 40
Towing the giant kite, preparatory to sending it aloft 41
Views of the kite in the air 42
Another view of the kite aloft 43
Views of Cygnet in air 44
After the descent — floating on the water, waiting to be picked up 45
Picking up the Cygnet 46
The Cygnet safely lifted on to its raft 46
End view of the Cygnet 47
The manhole 47
IV
ILLUSTRATIONS v
Page
Another view of the Cygnet showing the manhole 48
Front view of the raft and kite 49
Towing the kite, with Lieutenant Self ridge aboard CQ
All ready for the ascent ^
Just before the ascent -2
Kite with man aboard, flying at a height of 168 feet 52
Changes in the estuary of the Colorado river ^
Captain Roald Amundsen 56
Cooking vessel of the Eskimo 59
Eskimo toys -. 59
Eskimo means of making fire 60
Eskimo encampment 61
Eskimo cooking pot 66
Monument in memory of Sir John Franklin 67
Eskimo 67
The head of an Eskimo fishing spear 69
Eskimo hunter 70
Eskimo 71
Coal floating down the Ohio river 73
Glaciers 77
Four common seed-eating birds 80
Sparrow hawk 81
A useful bird of prey 82
Cactus wren 83
Golden eagle 84
A barred owl ?'3
A monument to the industry of barn owls 86
Pellets thrown up by owls 87
Three-toed woodpecker 88
Clark crow 89
Sage hen 90
Ring-tailed civet cat 92
Texas wild cat 93
Not dead, but playing possum 94
Common skunk wading through slush 95
Gray fox 96
Coyote pups 97
Typical breeding grounds of coyotes 97
A mute witness to the destructiveness of Michigan wolves 98
Apple tree killed by rabbits 99
Apple tree killed by field mice 99
Prairie dogs at mouth of burrow I0°
Very young cottontail rabbits in nest IO1
Field mouse I02
Sections of morning glory roots stored by field mouse IO3
Shelter house on fox farm in Maine I04?
Aspen being felled by beaver — note size of chips IO5
Beaver dam from below — note storage pond above dam I05
Hudson bay sable lo6
Orange groves of southern California I07
Elk in deep snow I09
Buffalo in Yellowstone Park II0
Twin black bear cubs .. IIJ
vi ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
Royal terns breeding on Battledore Island ............................................. 112
A brown pelican colony, Pelican Island reservation ........................... .......... 113
California murres on three arch rocks, off the Oregon coast ............................. 114
Cormorants nesting on three arch rocks bird reservation, coast of Oregon ............... 115
Young Cormorants, Devil's Lake, North Dakota ........................................ 1 16
Salmon caught in the act of trying to leap up the falls of the Shinn ...................... 125,
Fun for the boys and girls in their favorite schoolground, Ostre Anlaeg, Copenhagen,
Denmark . . ........................................................................ 126
Boys and girls of Ave Maria Charity School, Granada, Spain ........................... 127
Infant coolies in China ................................................................ 128
Pupils of a missionary school in China ................................................. 129
Little Japanese school-boys engaged in a lively tug of war .............................. 130
Girls under the trees — Tokio, Japan .................................................... 131
A group of Burmese children .......................................................... 132
India of tomorrow .................................................................... 133,
A group of school-girls in Kapiolani Park, Honolulu, Hawaii ........................... 134
School in Ceylon, showing pupils, teacher, and school-house ............................ 135,
Javanese at Garoet — Javanese women and children ................................. ; . . . 135
West Indian pickaninnies, scholars, and teacher before a school-house in Jamaica ........ 137
United States school on Indian reservation at the second Mesa of the Moki country ...... 138-
Meeting at mission school at Nibunza Bobuna Village, Congo ........................... 139.
Boys studying on the housetop at Assiout, Egypt. . . .................................... I4o
Characteristic scene in Northwestern Montana .................................. . I^0,
Typical views in Northwestern Montana ............................................... I52
Pack-train crossing the range .................................................... I53
View from Kootenai Mountain, looking south ............................. I53
Major Powell-Cotton with two of his pygmy trackers ........... ....'.
A group of pygmies ........................................... \ ' g
A forest giant, with tent between two embedded roots ...........
Floating village of Katanga, as seen from the shore ........
Three huts of the floating village, Katanga ....................... .' . ' ' l6l
Wall of burnt clay surrounding a village near Timbuktu, Africa.'.'
Natives near Timbuktu, in the valley of th Niger ............
A young girl, near Timbuktu ....................... ' 6
' Tl
Niger' U S°Wng Umt day Wal*
Granary in the valley of the Niger. ...........
Making cassava bread-Saint Vincent,' West Indies
Making tortillas-Salvador, Central America...
Tortilla market— Guadalupe, Mexico
A bread "Wallah»-Jeypore, India ...'.'.'.'
A bakery in Japan .......................
Two women grinding at the mill— Pal'esVine! '.
Baking bread in Syria ........... ............... I7°
Bread of the Orient, Egypt,' and Turkey'
bakery, where all the ingredients are carefully tested.' .' ' .' .' 176
akery, where the fermentation of the dough is developed 177
an American bakery 'JL
by pure air. . 179
180
ILLUSTRATIONS vii
Page
The Brady Glacier :8i
Marking the Alaskan boundary jg2
The surface of the "Hugh Miller" glacier ^3
Triangulation party returning from a trip to a station near the Muir glacier 183
View up Queen inlet toward the boundary line — the "Carroll" glacier shows in the back-
ground 184
A view showing how a surveyor should be shod who has much traveling to do on ice. ... 185
An observing party climbing a very steep slope to a triangulation station 185
Silk sleeping tent, weight about 8 pounds, 9 x 10, showing cots and sleeping bags 186
An observing party returning to camp from a triangulation station on a snow field which
is a little soft from the action of the sun 187
^'Camp diversion" 187
Sunset views in July 188
Taking a swim in a pool on the mountain top 189
Scene in Dismal Swamp — southern margin, near Elizabeth City, N. C 191
A well-constructed drainage ditch — side slope prevents caving and erosion 192
A poorly constructed drainage ditch — sides caved and eroded 193
Road-making across newly reclaimed tract of swamp land in Sacramento valley 194
Type of conveyor dredge used in channel-deepening 195
Reclaimed Shiocton swamp, Wisconsin — a crop said to be 20 tons per acre 196
Difficulties encountered in survey of Sacramento valley (U. S. Geological Survey party) . . 197
Minnesota swamp survey (U. S. Geological Survey party en route) 198
Hand-ditching by contract labor, Holbeck's swamp, near Charleston, S. C 198
Topographer at work in Tule swamp of Sacramento valley, California 199
Cathedral and Union Club, Cape Haitien 207
•Citizens of Cape Haitien 208
Boys of Santo Domingo 213
Sketch map of Haiti 215
•Colonnade of Golden Lily tank, with paintings of Siva's sports 219
Porch of a thousand pillars — Madura 220
Golden Lily tank — Madura 221
Teppakulam or raft tank — Madura 222
Among honest people 223
School children in a Swiss town 228
•Crossing a Swiss lake 229
"Padaung" woman and child — South Shan States, Burma 230
•Our equipage on the road to Cuzco — Mrs. Adams and the Cholo driver 232
Foot-bridge of woven willow over River Vilcanota, on the road to Cuzco 233
Foot-travelers 234
Inca burial tomb and Andean hut of mud and thatch 234
•Quichua farmers 235
Plowing at an elevation of 1 1,000 feet 235
What the Quichua farmer lacks in modern machinery he makes up in the decorative head-
dress of his oxen 236
Harvesting on the roof of the world 237
Gathering fuel for the home 238
Rear guard of a llama train 239
Beggars 239
'Quichua girls returning from mass 240
A full-blooded Quichua. 241
The patient beasts of burden of the Andean highland 242
Resting at a wayside hut 243
*"As in the days of Ataiiualpa" 244
viii ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
The decorated leader of the llama train ................................ . ............... 245
"With heads bowed and uncovered they stood, as in the long ago, greeting their beloved
Cuzco, sacred city of the sun ............................................... • ........ 246
A herd of llamas off duty. The pyramid is a mirage ................................... 247
Farming in the world's roof garden .................................................... 248
Ruins of the Temple of Viracocha ..................................................... 249
Pumping barge of the U. S. Reclamation Service — Williston project, North Dakota ...... 251
Cattle knee deep in alfalfa — Garden City project, Kansas ............................... 254
Blanchard Falls— Minidoka project .................................................... 255
In Gunnison canyon — Uncompahgre project, Colorado .................................. 256
Raising hogs in the Klamath valley— Klamath project, Oregon .......................... 259
View showing cultivated land in the lower valley of the Yakima river, Washington ...... 260
Pear tree in orchard of J. H. Forman and picture of owner — near Parker, Washington,
under Sunnyside canal ........ ...................................................... 261
Yakima maiden picking hops — Yakima project, Washington ............................ 262*
One acre of Concord grapes in orchard of William Squire, near Zillah, Washington ...... 266
Remains of a vanished race ........................................................... 269
The capitol grounds from the southwest corner of the capitol building, Phoenix, Arizona.. 270
Baled hay storage building at the Chandler ranch, 6 miles south of Mesa, Arizona ....... 271
Cholla cactus on the desert between government wells and desert wells, Roosevelt road-
Salt river project ................................................................... 273
Building homes on the desert in anticipation of the opening of the government works-
Salt River project ...................................................... 274
Pure-blooded Apache laborers constructing a road through the desert— Salt River project,
Arizona ................................................................ 2~-
The top of Fish Creek Hill, Arizona ........................ L .".."..'!!!'.!!'.!!'.!!!'. 1 '.'.'.! 276
Raising melons in the Salt River valley, Arizona ....................... \ 28o
The raising of grapes in the Salt River valley, near Mesa, Arizona ................ [ 28i
Almond orchard in bloom in the Salt River valley, Arizona ............... ' 282
Date tree in Salt River valley, near Mesa, showing the enormous crop of dates on 'one
Salt River project ..............................................
The Ivy Ranch, near Phoenix, Arizona— Salt River project, Arizona ....... '284
Watermelons in young peach orchard farm, Kerman, California ....... '287
The sea of sand of the Takla Makan desert ........................ ' 2gg
The sea of salt of the Lop desert ................
A Loplik house of reeds ................
.Loplik women and children ...........
^olian erosion in the Lop basin ...............
^giving rivt6 ^ * Kh°tan ^^ * °" ^ ™*^ *Ummer fe'e'in' 'ho'n^ of the life- *
The oasis of Khotan ........ ...........
The Crossroads of the Pacific ...... .......... • .............. 2Q4
The Monseki of Rinno Temple, Abbot Hikosaka" '
The Wind God in lemitsu's mausoleum ..........
Near leyasu's mausoleum ........... .............. 302
The volcano Asama . . ......................... 3°3-
tsu Hot Springs, beiw'een 'the' Volcanoes' Xsama and ' '
°O! "p.nn8:: N°- .: Inide the bath-house f
. . .. ..
Kusatsu, No. 3 ........ ..................................... 3°7
Falls of the Kerka— Dalmatia. ........ ................................. ' 3o8
Ragusa, Queen of Dalmatian cities. . . ............................. 3I<>
Peasant carding— Dalmatia ......... . ............................ 3"
ILLUSTRATIONS ix
Page
Women near Spalato— Dalmatia 315
Two beaux in "The Bocche"
At Zara— Dalmatia 3I?
A wayside fountain — interior Dalmatia 31*
Bocche di Cattaro from the mountain road to the capital of Montenegro 3
Saint Savina, a Greek orthodox monastery in the "Bocche" 322
A Montenegrin dandy 323
A Montenegrin official • 324
A Montenegrin bride 32~
Main street, Cettinje, Montenegro 32C
Canoe on the Lake of Scodra 329
Albanian tribesmen in Scodra bazar 33°
Country woman— Herzegovina 333
Herzegovina peasants traveling fourth class 3
Sarajevo pack ponies en route to market 335
Herzegovinian women in the streets of Saint Savina 33°
Moslem women, Mostar Herzegovina 33/
Herzgovinians and Bosnians at a fiesta 3
Bosnian houses— Jesero
Jesero, Bosnia ~*
Jayce, Bosnia— a Greek orthodox beauty
Jayce, Bosnia— Turkish fountain 34'
Sheep and Goats— Jayce 3^
Five hounds of Mr. John B. Goff's pack
Wolverine climbing a tree to escape pursuing dogs
Bear climbing a tree to escape pursuing dogs
The Fish Hawk Creek bear ;••••• • • • • •. 355
His Imperial Majesty Mohammed Ali, Shah of Persia, wearing the Kajar
His Imperial Highness, the Crown Prince of Persia
The Anderoom palace ; '
Armenian girls of the province of Urumiah, where the Persian disturbances were greater
The High Priest Sayed Abdollah Moshtehid of Teheran
An ancient Persian village near the Turkish frontier 34
A Persian drug shop and well— Teheran • 3
Persian bakery to the left and grocer's shop to the right— Teheran
A wagon load of bread— Teheran
A Persian merchant of second-hand clothing— Teheran - _• - -
"Kejavehs," the uncomfortable chairs in which women and children travel m F
A caravansary or "hotel" on the road to Shiraz, Persia
Crowd of Persian revolutionists ; ' • ; 37A
Crowds of refugees at the British legation during the agitation for a constitution 3
Mohammedan high priests, leaders of the constitutional revolt in T
Funeral of a Persian high priest— Teheran ''''"''
Copper vessels used for the cooking of food for the constitutional refugees at t h
legation " " ' * ' oQ_
A mountaineer of South Persia, near Bushire, on the Persian gulf
An aristocratic young Persian lady 3
Ferry-boats at Bagdad, on the Tigris
Another view of the boats used at Bagdad
Outline map of Persia
"Merry Widow" hats six feet in circumference
Wreckers eyeing the Physalia with interest
The Physalia on a reef
x ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
Curly tailed lizard, Cay Verde ........................................................ 392
Resting after the hurricane on Upper Gold Ring; an abandoned negro hut ............... 392
General view of booby and man-o'-war colonies ........................................ 393
Boobies on coral reef, 75 feet above the sea, one of the highest coral cliffs in the Bahamas. 394
Western part of the booby colony, on the elevated portion of the island .................. 395
Parent boobies covering young from direct sun heat of 130 degrees ..................... 396
Nesting booby, with young displaced in foreground ..................................... 396
Only young twin boobies noticed in 700 nests ........................................... 397
The parent boobies stand guard night and day except when searching for food .......... 397
Boobies in flight— note fan-tails ....................................................... 39&
Young booby in final gray plumage just before changing to adult ....................... 398
Man-o'-war birds soaring 100 yards overhead on motionless wings ....................... 399
Breeding colony of man-o'-war birds ................................................... 400
Young man-o'-war bird at close range ................................................. 401
Male and female man-o'-war birds flying over sea grape thicket — note wing action and
forked tails ....................................................................... 4°3
Five nests of man-o'-war birds in a radius of six feet— this bird has but one young ....... 403
Man-o'-war bird descending on nest — note remarkable forward wing movement ..... i . . . 404
Female man-o'-war bird, showing extreme extent of its wing, 8 feet from tip to tip ...... 405
A contrast: Old bedraggled cow moose, indifferent to approaching canoe; magnificent bull
moose in action — Nictau lake ................. . . ..................................... 408
Large cow moose detecting scent from camera blind — Red Brook creek, New Brunswick. . 409
Bull moose struggling ashore .................. .... .................................... 409
Bull moose taken in July, 1907, and again by flashlight three nights later ................ 410
An early foggy morning on Nictau lake, 6 a. m. ; cow moose feeding .................... 411
Buck white-tail deer at New Brunswick trout stream. .................................. 411
Daylight — bull moose swimming so rapidly that it required three paddles to overtake
him (4 p. m.) .............................. . ....................................... 4I2
Flashlight— cow and calf moose— Upper Tobique river, New Brunswick ................ 413
Daylight— cow moose photographed at eight feet from blind ............................. 414
Flashlight— large bull moose— Upper Tobique river, New Brunswick .................... 417
Third picture of the big bull moose that was photographed four times in twenty minutes . . 418
Pair of young white-tail deer— Tobique river, New Brunswick, July 8, 1907 ............. 419
Flashlight— young bull moose gazing with interest at approaching jack light— Nictau lake,
New Brunswick, July 2, 1907 ................................... ... .............. 420
Flashlight— boat rigged for night hunting with cameras, showing flashlight apparatus and
jack lamp; taken 1893 ............................................................... ^2l
A 75-pound timber wolf trapped on a deer runway near author's camp, Lake Superior,
July 29, 1907 ............ ; . , ....... ................................................. ' ^3
Five hundred forest mushrooms at the base of a hard maple, Lake Superior ..... ........ .423
A sapsucker making fresh sap basins in bark, where it also catches flies attracted by the
sweet fluid ; July 26, 1907 .......................................
Another view, showing regularity of sap basins covering six weeks' use
Mink taking its own picture by flashlight by pulling on a string baited with fish-White
fish river, Michigan ; July, 1907 ................
Flashlight-white-tail deer, with porcupine 'to 'right-July '28,' '1907; ' Whiie ' Fish' Va'ke ^
Michigan ............................
Two extremes-a Florida owl and a Canada'j'ay or whiskey "jack"
'eerlake, Sandy River district, Newfoundland ........... 7^
Testing camera with thread set across caribou trail
"' *
D™*W™n^00k.*e" °W" PlCtUreS Several"hou"'^--NewVoundIand,"ociober *
Daylight-weasel, Newfoundland ;' "iis 'nimbieness makes it haM 'to photogniph \\\'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'. ™
ILLUSTRATIONS xi
Page
Caribou stag, doe, and fawn ; one-half of the does carry small horns ; the fawn is assisted
by the suction in swimming 430
Caribou in agonized rush to escape canoe 431
Caribou swim slowly, but go ashore with great speed 431
Caribou in herds swim compactly; suction helps those in rear 432
Very large caribou stag, taken in rough water and on a dark day 433
Caribou stag with symmetrical horns photographed at eight feet; note beautiful white
collar carried by stags only 433
Rising flight of pelicans — (a) wings seen at different angles; (fr) where it resembles the
Canada goose 435
Side flight of pelicans 436
Approaching flight of pelicans 437
A group of fine old pelicans, with a few young in foreground, all facing one way 438
About 1,000 young pelicans bathing and playing at water's edge 438
Croups of young pelicans sleeping and preening themselves 439
Young pelican in "gooseflesh" phase 440
Pelicans in shadow of approaching thunderstorm 441
Pelicans coming from the ocean to Indian river with fish for young 442
Male and female quail in orange grove — Halifax river, Florida ; April i, 1908 443
Catbird eating orange — Halifax river, Florida ; April i, 1908 444
Brown thrasher approaching orange 444
Wild gray squirrels eating oranges — Halifax river, Florida ; April i, 1908 445
The Apache 449
Chief Garfield — Jicarilla — Apache 450
Jicarilla — Apache maiden 451
Nesjaja Hatali — Navaho 453
Luzi— Papago >. 454
Sunset from Mt. Wilson 459
Sea of fog from Mt Wilson 460
Sea of fog from Mt. Wilson 461
A storm in the mountains 462
Entitled Snow Yucca 463
Cottages — Mt Wilson in winter 464
Mt Wilson hotel and cottages in winter 465
San Antonio or "Old Baldy" in winter from Mt. Wilson .' 466
Night view from Mt Wilson 467
Papuans among the little colony of traders 470
Papuan women 472
Papuans near the mission at Dorey 475
A Papuan of Dorey 476
One of our best Papuan helpers at Dorey 477
Men of Dorey 478
End view of a communal "Long House" near Dorey 479
Papuan children 480
Papuan canoes 481
. Jobi Island women 482
A Wiak Island canoe 483
Hauling mahogany logs from the forest — Cochinos bay, Cuba 487
•One of the surly men of Meosboendi, Wiak Isalnd 484
A field of corn in a clearing 488
Semi-piratical sea captain of a trading schooner on the south coast of Cuba 489
Old man and a typical native house — Cochinos bay, Cuba 490
'The day after the cyclone of October 17, 1906 — Cochinos bay, Cuba 493
XII ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
A sunset on Cochinos bay, Cuba • 495
Map of Bay of Cochinos 497
A missionary's water-carrier in Pyengyang, Korea 498
Most of the carrying in Korea is done by men 499
A wayside shrine just inside the Seven Star gate, Pyengyang, Korea 500
A Korean bride in chair 500
Buddhist fish inside monastery at Hyang San, North Korea 501
A wishing stone 5oi
A Korean lady of the court 502
Korean father and two children 503
Stone carving symbolizing long life— Seoul, Korea 504
Boys of heathen school, Korea 505
Devil house near the entrance to Yeng Byen, Korea 506
Interior of devil house 507
Part of the gallery of names on top of Yak San (mountain), Yeng Byen, Korea 508
Fisherman's kitchen — Shackelford Island, North Carolina 510
Fisherman's camp — Shackelford bank, North Carolina 511
Seminole Indian home near Miami, Florida 512
Harvest homes at Gabii 513
Goat herder's house in Texas 514
Mt. Hood from Sandy river bluffs, looking east up Sandy river 516
Relief map of Mt. Hood 518
Climbing Zigzag glacier — guide in front cutting steps 522
At work on the top 522
Eliot glacier, at northeast side of Mt. Hood 523
Another view of Eliot glacier 524
Eskimo beauties from Godthaab, Greenland 526
An early morning view of the village of Kajo, in Humboldt bay 528
The "Karriwarri" or sacred house at Djamna 530
A man of Djamna standing by the bow of his canoe 531
Men of Djamna Island 532
The sacred structures of Tobadi, Humboldt Bay
The great "Karriwarri" at the village of Tobadi, in Humboldt Bay
Scene in Humboldt Bay
Men of Tobadi Village '.'.'. ...... .............. 536
Trading with the natives : Humboldt Bay
Papuans ferrying the writer from Tobadi Village to Metu Debi Island, in Humboldt Bay* 538
Women going calling along a village street of Tobadi c^g
A village street in Tobadi, Humboldt Bay [
Papuan guides '.'.'.'.[
An archer at Humboldt Bay, using a fish arrow
The very rare Proechidna, or egg-laying ant-eater ' . ' ?L
A Papuan tree kangaroo climbing: found only in forests of New Guinea'
A cassowary at Sorong, New Guinea
Leaving New Guinea ^44
Sketch map of the Pacific Islands
Native assembly house: Bora, Society Islands'.'.
Mabu, a village in the Fiji Islands
On Kambara Island, Fiji 55°
Native fighting man: Moen Island, Caroline Islands"
Mual district and two of his wives, Caroline Island^ .'
Men of Ponapi Island, Caroline Islands
Daughters of Chief Nakiroro, Gilbert group!.
558
ILLUSTRATIONS xin
Page
Native women and children : Tongufali village, Ellis group 559
House of Johnnie Toga, Vavu Island, Tonga group 560
Native princess "Mele" — Niue Island, Tonga group 561
Native child, Low Archipelago 562
Sketch map of Algeria. t 564
Zouaves at Setif 565
Ships of the desert 566
On the road to Biskra 567
Looking across the desert on the route to Biskra 578;
A canyon in the outskirts of Biskra 571
In the palm gardens : Biskra 572
Gossiping on a street corner : Biskra 573
The horseless plough 574
The roads about Biskra have a biblical atmosphere 575
Outside a cafe : Biskra 576
A rest before the desert journey 576
A typical barber shop : the open street 577
Street scene in Biskra 578
An Ouled-Nail : Biskra 578
A seller of bread 579
An Ouled-Nail 579
A happy family : Biskra 580
Dancing girls : Biskra 580
A war lord of the desert 581
Rapid transit is not essential in Biskra 581
A street crowd : Biskra 582
The market place : Biskra ,. 583
Playing marbles : Biskra 584
A teacher administering discipline to a pupil by rapping his hands : Biskra 585
Gathering the dates 586
A rivulet of muddy water which flows through the main street of Sidi-okba 588
Bedouin encampments passed on the road from Biskra to Sidi-Okba 591
The fourth posture of the devout Mussulman at prayer 592
He bows to the ground three times 593
The fruit that looks like a watermelon is in reality a lemon 594
Qahatika water girl 595
Liliental's gliding machine 596
A dorway carved out of a single block of stone in the pre-Incasic temple at Tiahuanaco,
Peru 598
In the ruins of the oldest city in the new world, Tiahuanaco 599
Ruins of the temple, Tiahuanaco 600
Women of the Tiahuanaco 600
Women of the Tiahuanaco of today 601
The village band, Tiahuanaco 602
Gaudy hats worn by the men of Tiahuanaco at fiestas 603
Sailing on the lake of the clouds 605
Sketch map showing location of Lake Titicaca and Andean Highlands 606
Constructing a balsa of reeds on an islet of Lake Titicaca 606
Ferrying mules in the reed boats 607
Embarking an a balsa 608
View of a part of the deck of a balsa 608
Ferry-boats waiting for a fare, Lake Titicaca 609
On the trail to the valley of Yucay, bordered by Spanish broom 6n
xiv ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
The valley of Yucay 612
Ruins of the fortress of Ollentayrambo, in the valley of Yucay 614
Ruins of the fortress of Pisac. Astronomical stone, Pisac. In the valley of Yucay 615
Types seen in the valley of Yucay, Peru 616
A flock of alpacas, seen in the valley of Yucay b 617
Quaint costumes of village girls on the wharf beside the fishing boats, Zuyder Zee 623
Neighbors, big and little, in a tidy street of a Dutch town 626
Picturesque and thrifty Dutch country women with milk pails balanced on wooden yokes. 631
A hamlet in the Black Forest 636
A typical Black Forest vale in June 637
A main forest road and road mender 639
A wayside hut in the forest for the protection of forest workmen and travelers 640
A nursery in the Black Forest 641
A typical Black Forest home 642
The village smith's wife, with five of her fourteen children 643
A corner in the living room. The curtains enclose the bed 644
Women on their way to work in the forest 645
On the road to the hay field 645
The main street of Baiersbronn, in the Black Forest 647
The celebration at Mitteltal 648
High leather boots worn in Russia 650
An out-door shoe factory in France 651
A Medieval style of shoe still in use 652
Red leather shoes with huge pompons, emphasizing the up-turned toes worn by the
Queen's guards in Athens 653
A street of shoe stores in Athens 654
A Chinese shoe stall in a city market , 655
Tiny shoes of fine kid and silk embroidery worn by Chinese ladies of the upper classes -in
Canton 656
Probably the oddest shoes in the world 657
Bargain sale of Japanese clogs and sandals at a shop in Tokyo 658
Departments of one of the largest high-grade shoe manufactories in the United States .... 659
Footgear of ancient cliff-dwellers, found in Arizona 660
Commander Peary's ship, the "Roosevelt" 662
The President bidding "God Speed" to the intrepid crew of the "Roosevelt". . .: 665
Commander Peary and Herbert L. Bridgman, saying farewell aboard the "Roosevelt". . . . 667
Statue of Manco Capac, the emperor who founded Cuzco 670
Remains of the palace of the first Inca Manco Capac 671
A mountain trail overlooking the valley of Cuzco 672
A Cuzco street scene, showing old Spanish balcony: Note llamas rolling in the dust 673
Near Cuzco 674
Familiar faces in Cuzco 675
A fountain in Cuzco 676
The Plaza, Cuzco, showing a procession from the Cathedral 677
The original virgin of Cuzco 678
A stationary shrine in a Cuzco street 679
A religious procession in Cuzco 680
Twelve-sided stone in Cuzco 6gj
A street of Cuzco 5g2
A view of the fortress of Sacsahuaman 683
A view of one of the salients of the fortress of Sacsahuaman .684
Seats of the Incas overlooking Sacsahuaman, Cuzco, carved out of solid rock 685
Gathering fuel
ILLUSTRATIONS xv
Page
Guichuas : last of the Incas 537
A poncho weaver of Cuzco 688
Cork oaks partially stripped of the valuable bark : Almorima, Spain 690
Boiling the green bark — lifting a batch from the vat: the cord industry at Almoraima,
Spain 691
The stock-yard at Almoraima, Spain, where piles of bark await curing and bailing 692
Adem, the author's faithul Somali 695
Guests on their way to Emperor Menelik's lunch party for 7,980 people 697
Galla woman ; Abyssinia 699
A typical high official of Abyssinia 700
Woman's market in the Yambo country 701
Stampeding Nuer women 703
The long-legged people — Nuer men and women 704
Author's three pet ostriches, and leper camp-follower 705
Sometimes a small fish is caught on the Nile ; sometimes not so small 707
Ivory on the river Chinko 708
Yacoma crew in author's canoe on the river Mbomu 709
Tongti with hair ornamentations of beads, Congo Free State 710
The Sultan of Bongasso and his wives 711
Rubber being brought in a Societe des Sultanats (Bongasso), French Congo 712
The best dancer on the Ubangi : Banzyville, Congo Free State 713
Cannibals with wonderful bead decorations on the hair : Congo Free State 714
The longest canoe (7i*/2 feet) on the Ubangi 715
Bananas being conveyed by native children into the Congo Free State post of Banzyville. . 716
Women dancing in the Congo Free State Ji?
Cannibal dancers in Congo Free State 718
Fisher women on the Ubangi, Congo Free State 719
Picturesque cannibals : Sango tribe 720
A beauty competition 721
Mandja women, showing their method of carrying the baby 722
Women with, elongated lips : Shari river 723
Women with elongated lips (profile) 724
Women on the Shari river, showing extension of lips at various ages 725
Woman of the Lower Shari : two wooden disks were inserted in the lips 726
Tuaregs with their typical face screens 727
Great mud barns for storing grain on the Upper Niger 728
Headdress of Fulbeh women on the Niger 729
Caravan entering Timbuctu 73°
A Moor of Timbuctu 73*
A woman of Timbuctu 732
Timbuctu children 733
A girl 733
A street in Djenne 734
Djenne : Timbuctti's sister city 735
The olive orchard beneath which the city of Tralles lies buried 743
A limekiln among the ruins of Tralles 744
A typical plowman of Asia Minor 747
A view inside the theatre, Hierapolis 74&
The cascades at Hierapolis 75°
Another view of the cascades 7
The baths at Hierapolis 7
Hierapolis : the mineral springs 754
City of the dead 75<S
xvi ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
Wandering shepherds of Asia Minor 757
Waiting for a train : Asia Minor 759
Bulgarian Infantry 761
Counting animals for military service : Bulgaria 762
Scene in the market place of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria 763
A Bulgarian peasant 764
Priest and peasant : Bulgaria 765
Bulgarian soldiers 766
A corner of the monastery at Rilo 767
In the courtyard of the Rilo Monastery 767
On the road near Plevna, Bulgaria 768
Scene in a Bulgarian village 768
Scene in Sofia 769
A Bulgarian funeral 770
Dancing the Kolo, the Bulgarian dance 771
A Bulgarian belle in her garden 772
Servian girls 774
Servian peasants 775
A gipsy in Servia 775
The metropolitan on coronation day : Belgrade, Servia 776
A prince of Montenegro 777
A Servian 778
Montenegrin soldiers 778
Tower of Skulls, Servia 779
Well-to-do citizens of Belgrade, the capital of Servia 780
Herders at Cettinge, the capital of Montenegro - 780
Montenegrins at Cettinge 781
Servian women at Belgrade 782
Turkish women at Herzegovina 782
Street scene in southern Herzegovina 783
Searching employees at a government tobacco factory, Sarajevo, Bosnia 784
Water "flasks" for sale at Mostar, Herzegovina 785
Veiled women out walking : Mostar, Bosnia 786
A Roman bridge at Mostar, Herzegovina 787
A corner in a Moslem cemetery : Bosnia 787
Merrymakers in Bosnia 788
Turks in Bosnia 788
A citizen of Bosnia 789
A Trappist monk : Bosnia 789
A Greek of Saloniki, European Turkey 79°
Selling pomegranates, Saloniki 791
A water-seller : Saloniki 791
An old tower of Saloniki 792
A street scene in Adrianople, European Turkey 792
Christian women of Saloniki 793
Village scene in Macedonia 793
Greek Orthodox priests of Monastir, Macedonia 794
The Turkish butcher : Saloniki 795
The Macedonian 796
Albanian recruits for the Sultan's bodyguard 797
Mohammedan women of European Turkey 798
Map of southeastern Europe 799
Making Turkish coffee 800
A typical Turk 801
ILLUSTRATIONS xvii
Page
Asiatic soldiers of the Turkish Army in Macedonia 802
Mammoth oil gusher on fire at San Geronimo, Mexico 804
A single chrysanthemum plant with 96 blossoms : Japan 806
Figures of men with chrysanthemum plants trained to grow as clothing for their persons.. 807
Bound for the market : Agram, Croatia 810
A stall in the market of Agram, Croatia 810
Scenes in the market of Agram, Croatia 810
Peasants at Agram, Croatia 812
Petticoats seen at the market of Agram, Croatia 813
A church of Agram 814
A peasant's home in Croatia 815
A barn in Croatia 815
Fishing folk on the Adriatic 816
Drying sardines, near Fiume, Croatia 817
Maraschino leaves: Zara, Dalmatia, where the famous Maraschino cordial is made 818
On the market : Agram, Croatia \ 818
In the Austro-Hungarian province of Dalmatia 819
Perhaps the smallest cap on earth. Often a mere disc of red cloth the size of a dollar:
in Dalmatia 820
The melon market in southern Dalmatia 821
Scene in the macaroni factory 822
A church parade for rain in a drought : Zara, Dalmatia 822
The hazel gatherers of Rovigno. These nuts are world-renowned 823
A shop at Spalato. Inside Diocletian's palace of 305 A. D 823
A gipsy's hut and family 824
Inside a gipsy hut 825
Gipsy men 825
Treading the wash : Croatia 826
Slovak peasants in Croatia 826
Washing in the Dobra : Croatia 827
Peasant Boys : Croatia. '. 828
On the market : Pola, Croatia 829
At Ogulin, Croatia 830
At work in the salt beds : Capodistria 831
Salting it down between the lagoons : Capodistria, Austria 831
'Good types in Croatia 832
Emigrants at Fiume ready to leave for the United States 832
Bird's-eye view of southern part of Priene, showing the winding meander in the plain 835
Turkish town of Sokia, near Smyrna 836
•Camel drivers unloading cargo at a station, near Smyrna, Asia Minor 837
Mitylene : The castle as viewed from the southern harbor 838
Mitylene : Castle Mole at the entrance of the harbor 839
Mitylene : Public road through an olive orchard 840
'Scene on the quay of Mitylene 841
:Sack menders at work : Smyrna 842
Washing for gold : Asia Minor 843
Ephesus : Excavated street leading to the library 844
Ephesus : The double church, western section 845
'Street in Magnesia : Roman barracks on either side 848
The great theatre at Miletus 850
One end of the theatre at Miletus 851
Colophon : Well-preserved tomb in the Necropolis. Type of Zaptieh or Turkish mounted
police 852
Type of Greek shepherd near Colophon 853
xviii ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
Herd of goats on a farm near ancient Colophon 854
The way licorice root is brought to a station in the Meander valley 855
Greek school children and their teachers in Aidin, interior of Asia Minor 856
Young loggerhead turtles just after hatching : Loggerhead Key, Florida 860
The most northerly grove of palmettoes, Smith Island, Cape Fear, North Carolina 861
Live oak at Southport, North Carolina 862
The sea destroying the forest : Coast of Florida 863
The o^l Spanish fort, Matanzas Inlet, Florida 864
Sand dune overwhelming a forest 865
Sand shapes sculptured by the wind : Fernandina, Florida 866-
Ledges of Coquina rock at Anastasia Island, Florida 867
A "norther" on the Florida coast 870
An old seagrape on Elliott's Key, Florida 871
A typical church of the thatched roof type at Syo Got, Korea 872-
Nurse girls in Korea 872
All plowing is done with bulls in Korea 875.
Hay carts in Korea , 873
Woman weaving : Korea 874
Delivery wagon in Korea 874
Woman unwinding thread to put in loom : Korea 875
Woman starching thread and preparing it for loom : Korea 876
A candy boy : Korea 877
Two Christian grandfathers, aged 78 and 80 : Korea 877
Bundles of whalebone as received at the factory 878:
Scene at the whaling station, Sechar, on the west coast of Vancouver Island 879^
A "Yucca" seen on the slopes of Mount Wilson, California 880
The late Daniel Coit Gilman 88 1
A Bulgarian bride and groom 882
Malays in native costume : Singapore 884
A Tamil bride and groom : Singapore 885
Chinese coolie women who work in the tin mines of the *Malay peninsula 886
Chinese pepper plantation : Malay peninsula 887
WASHINGTON, D. C.
PRESS OF JUDD & DETWEH.ER, INC.
1908
VOL. XIX, No. i
WASHINGTON
JANUARY, 1908
THE
an
IN THE SAVAGE SOUTH SEAS
BY BEATRICE GRIMSHAW
Miss Grimshaw is an enterprising young English woman who recently passed
several years in Fiji and the New Hebrides on a search for good opportunities
for investment. She explored many unknown sections of these islands and has
written a delightful narrative of her travels and experiences, "Fiji and Its Pos-
sibilities." The following article is abstracted from this book, and is printed
here through the courtesy of the publishers, Messrs Doubleday, Page & Com-
pany of New York, by whom all the extracts and illustrations ~are copyrighted.
FIJI is a British colony, situated in
the southwest Pacific, lying be-
tween the 1 5th and 22d parallels
of south latitude and between 157 east
and 177 west longitude. It consists of
155 islands, with a total area of 7,400
square miles. Most of the land is con-
tained in the two great islands of Viti
Levu (Great Fiji) and Vanua Levu
(Great Land), which account for 4,112
and 2,432 square miles respectively.
These two islands are exceptionally well
wooded and watered, and could, it is said,
support three times the population of the
whole group. Viti Levu is in every way
the most important island in the archi-
pelago. It contains the seat of govern-
ment, the principal harbors, all the roads,
and much the greater part of the colony's
trade. There is one town in the group
besides Suva — Levuka, the capital of
former days, on the small island of
Ovalau.
The climate is certainly hot, though the
thermometer does not rise to anv ex-
traordinary heights. During the three
hottest months — January, February, and
March — the highest shade temperature
ranges between 90° and 94° Fahr., and
the lowest between 67° and 72°, roughly
speaking. In the cooler months of June,
July, and August, 59° and 89° are the
usual extremes. The air is moist, as a
rule, and in Suva, at all events, one may
safely say that a day without any rain is
almost unknown. On the northern side
of Viti Levu the climate is a good deal
drier and in consequence less relaxing.
Dysentery is fairly common, but there is
no fever to speak of, and the climate, on
the whole, is considered healthful. Mos-
quitoes are so troublesome that most of
the better class of private houses have at
least one mosquito-proof room, with
doors and windows protected by wire
gauze.
As we pass down the main street of
the capital, the curious mixture of the
population is very noticeable — whites,
half-castes, Samoans, Indians, Chinese,
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
and, more conspicuous than any, the
Fijians themselves — tall, magnificently
built people of a color between coffee and
bronze, with stiff, brush-like hair, trained
into a high "pompadour," clean shirts
and smart short cotton kilts, and a general
aspect of well-groomed neatness. They
do not look at all like "savages" and,
again, they have not the keen, intellectual
expression of the Indians or the easy
amiability of the Samoan type of coun-
tenance. They are partly Melanesian,
partly Polynesian in type, and they form,
it is quite evident, the connecting link be-
tween Eastern and Western Pacific.
East of Fiji, life is one long, lotus-
eating dream, stirred only by occasional
parties of pleasure, feasting, love-making,
dancing, and a very little gardening work.
Music is the soul of the people, beauty
of face and movement is more the rule
than the exception, and friendliness to
strangers is carried almost to excess.
Westward of the Fijis lie the dark,
wicked, cannibal groups of the Solo-
mons, Banks, and New Hebrides, where
life is more like a nightmare than a
dream; murder stalks openly in broad
daylight, people are nearer to monkeys
than human beings in aspect, and music
and dancing are little practiced and in
the rudest possible state.
In Fiji itself the nameless, dreamy
charm of the eastern islands is not; but
the gloom, the fevers, the repulsive people
of the west are absent also. Life is
rather a serious matter for the Fijian, on
the whole ; he is kept in order by his
chiefs and by the British government,
and has to get through enough work in
a year to pay his taxes ; also, if the sup-
ply of volunteers runs short, he is liable
to be forcibly recruited for the armed
native constabulary, and this is a fate that
oppresses him a good deal — until he has
accustomed himself to the discipline of
the force, when he generally makes an
excellent soldier. But, all in all, he has
a pleasant time, in a pleasant, productive
climate, and is a very pleasant person
himself, hospitable in the highest degree,
honest, good-natured, and clever with
his hands, though of a less highly intel-
lectual type than the Tongan or the
Samoan.
A MARVELLOUS TRANSFORMATION
The whole penal apparatus is one
gigantic jest, and is regarded as such by
most of the whites and not a few of the
natives.
To begin with, there is hardly any real
crime, what there is being furnished
chiefly by the Indian laborers employed
on the estates of the Colonial Sugar Re-
fining -Company. The Fijians them-
selves, though less than two generations
removed from the -wild and wicked days
of the Thakombau reign, are an ex-
tremely peaceable and good-natured
people. In the fifties and sixties, and
even later, murder, torture, and cannibal-
ism were the chief diversions of a Fijian's
life, and the power of working one's
self into a more violent and unrestrained
fit of rage than any one else of one's
acquaintance was an elegant and
much-sought-after accomplishment. This
change, effected largely by the work of
the missionaries, but also by the civiliz-
ing influences of the British government
and of planters and traders innumerable,.
is most notable. Nothing can be more
amiable and good-natured than the Fijian
of today; no colored citizen in all the
circle of the British colonies is less in-
clined to crime.
Yanggona (the "kava" of the eastern
Pacific) is the universal drink of Fiji.
It is the hard, woody root of a handsome
bush (the Piper m'ethysticum) which
grows freely in the mountains. The
Fijians prepare the root by grating or
pounding, pour water over the pounded
mass, and strain it through a wisp of
bark fiber. The resulting drink looks
like muddy water and tastes much the
same, with a flavor of pepper and salt
added. One soon gets to like it, however,
and drunk in moderation it is extremely
refreshing and thirst-quenching. The
Fijians do not drink moderately, I re-
gret to say; they often sit up all night
over their yanggona, drinking until they
THE SAVAGE SOUTH SEAS
THE VILLAGE PLATE, FIJI
A ROOT OF YANGGONA FROM WHICH THE INTOXIC
THE FIJIAN ISLANDERS IS MADE
DRINK OF
These and following illustrations are from photographs by Beatrice Grim-
shaw, and are copyrighted by Doubleday, Page & Co., 1907
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
VANILLA PLANT AND B^AN
are stupefied and sleepy and quite unable
to walk, for yang-gona taken in excess
paralyses the leg^ for an hour or two,
even though the head may be quite clear.
The British government has forbidden
the ancient method of preparing the root,
in which it was chewed and spat out into
the bowl, instead of being pounded. For
all that, yanggona is very frequently
chewed at the present day, when no white
people are about.
There are no woods in the world more
beautiful and valuable than the woods
of Fiji,- although want of capital and, to
some extent, want of enterprise has pre-
vented their becoming widely known.
"Bua-bua," the boxwood of the Pacific,
is very common and grows to an immense
size. It weighs 80 pounds to the cubic
foot, is very hard, and most durable.
The "cevua," or bastard sandalwood, a
strong-scented, very durable wood, grows
freely in logs one foot and two feet in
diameter ; and the real sandalwood is also
found, though not plentifully. Another
useful wood is "vesi," which grows two
and three feet in diameter. It is much
like teak — hard, heavy, and extremely
lasting in the ground or out of doors ; it
is also rich-colored and very easily
polished. The "dakua" is one of the
most valuable woods; it much resembles
the New Zealand kauri pine and grows
to a large size, sometimes six and seven
feet in diameter. It contains a great deal
of gum, and quantities of this can be
taken out of the ground wherever a tree
DRYING VANIU,A,
THE SAVAGE SOUTH SEAS
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
THE SAVAGE SOUTH SEAS
has been. The timber is useful for
almost any purpose. The "yaka" might
be called the rosewood of the Pacific, if
it did not also, in some degree, resemble
mahogany. It is a wood of the greatest
beauty, being exquisitely marked and
veined and taking a high polish. This is
a wood that certainly should be known to
cabinet-makers, and no doubt will be later
on. The "savairabunidamu," a curious
dark-red wood, is extraordinarily tough,
and can be steamed and bent to almost
any shape — a valuable quality. The "bau
vundi" is a kind of cedar, very workable
and most lasting. A singularly beautiful
timber is the "bau ndina," which is deep
rose-red in color, tough and firm, and
suitable for engravers' use. Besides these,
there are more than sixty varieties of
other woods, all useful or beautiful and
most to be found in great profusion. The
quantities available are very large.
UNCANNY INSECTS
The wonderful stick insects of Fiji,
familiar in all home museums, are found
on nearly every cocoanut tree. They are
very ill-smelling, and squirt a fetid fluid
at one's eyes, if handled. Leaf insects I
never saw, except when the natives
caught and brought them to me, but all
the guava bushes have them, although a
white man's eye can seldom distinguish
them from their shelter. They are most
miraculous and uncanny creatures, ab-
solutely leaves endowed with the power
of motion, so far as the most scrutinizing
eye can see, for even their legs and heads
are a precise copy of stalks and small
leaflets.
A certain enterprising man and his
wife, who were getting rich very slowly
indeed keeping a country store, resolved
to try whether the magic bean might
not do for them what it had done for
others in South America and the West
Indies. So, in the face of some actual
opposition and continual ridicule, they ex-
pended their little capital of 250 pounds
on the leasing of eight acres of warm,
sheltered valley land and the planting of
9,000 cuttings of good Mexican vanilla.
For three years, with the assistance of
one Fijian and occasionally a couple of
Indians, the industrious couple kept their
plants weeded and tended, and latterly
looked to the fertilizing of the flowers — a
rather tedious business, done every day
by hand, in the earliest hours of the
morning; and at the end of the three
years the reward came, for the plants
were yielding splendidly and were ex-
pected to give about 9,000 pounds of
dried beans, bringing an average price
of 10 shillings a pound. The iruits of
the first season were just coming in when
I visited the plantation, and the lucky
young couple were counting up their
gains, present and future, with joyful
hearts.
SUUvEN NEW HEBRIDES
The New Hebrides are not very far
from Australia — only about 1,500 miles
northeast of Sydney — and they are by no
means an insignificant group, since they
extend over seven hundred miles of sea,
and some of the islands are sixty and
seventy miles long.
The native population is variously
estimated at 60,000 to 100,000, and there
are about three hundred French settlers
and less than two hundred British and
colonials, most of whom are missionaries.
The islands are extremely beautiful
and remarkably fertile. Three crops of
maize a year can be raised with little
trouble. Coffee is largely grown, and
there is none better in the Pacific. Mil-
let, for broom-making, grows readily and
pays well. Copra can be produced in the
New Hebrides to better advantage than
in any of the British Pacific colonies, the
Solomons only excepted. Eighty nuts
a tree is considered a very good average
over the greater part of the South Seas.
In the New Hebrides the figures I re-
ceived seemed almost beyond belief, but,
even allowing for much exaggeration, it
seems certain that the average yearly crop
of nuts must be quite twice as large as in
Fiji, the Cook Islands, or Tonga. I saw
more than one tree that had three hun-
dred nuts at once upon it (as I was in-
8
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
WARRIOR, NEW HEBRIDES
THE SAVAGE SOUTH SEAS
THE: WOMEN'S DANCE
DANCING AND SINGING
SCENES IN NEW HEBRIDES
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
BRINGING OUT TH£ MUMMY FROM THE} "HAMAI," (SEE PAGE 17)
THE SAVAGE SOUTH SEAS
I 2
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
THE SAVAGE SOUTH SEAS
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
SHOOTING FISH, NEW HEBRIDES
formed ; I did not count them, since that
would have involved going up the tree
with a paint-pot and a brush to mark
them off), and I heard of one or two that
had four and even five hundred.
This is a more important matter than
might appear at first, for the copra
trade is the true gold-mine of the Pacific.
The oil that is expressed from the dried
nut kernels is used in many different de-
partments of commerce, especially in
soap-making, and the demand constantly
exceeds the available supply — so much so
that the well-known firm of Lever
Brothers have been buying up large
tracts of land in the British Solomons to
keep their factories supplied.
The popular idea of the New Hebri-
dean, for a wonder, comes very near the
truth. He is supposed to be, and is,
treacherous, murderous, and vindictive.
He is to the full as sensual and indolent
as the Eastern Islander and lacks almost
every virtue possessed by the latter. He
is almost inconceivably clumsy and stupid
in a house or on a plantation ; almost de-
void of gratitude, almost bare of natural
affection; ready to avenge the smallest
slight by a bloody murder, but too
cowardly to meet an enemy face to face.
Yet there are a few things to say in his
favor. He is wonderfully honest — so
much so that in the bush districts a coin
or a lump of tobacco found by the way-
side will never be appropriated by the
finder, but will be placed in a cleft stick
at the edge of the track, for the real
owner to take the next time he may
chance to pass that way; and if the pos-
sessor never returns, the "find" will re-
main where it has been placed until some
white man or some "civilized" native
from a plantation passes by and appro-
priates it.
One of the strange things seen in one
village was the collections of boars' tusks
belonging to the chiefs. These were dis-
played on a long stand that exactly re-
sembled eight or ten bazaar stalls joined
together. There were some hundreds of
them placed in long rows — how many
exactly I had not time to count, as I
heard that the canoes were just coming
home from the mainland and I wanted to
be on the shore to meet them. Many of
the tusks were curved into a complete
THE SAVAGE SOUTH SEAS
17
double circle. These are greatly prized,
but are only obtained at the cost of much
suffering to the unlucky pig that fur-
nishes them. He is tied up in a house
and never allowed to wander forth, for
fear of destroying his tusks. From each
side of the jaw the teeth that oppose the
tusk and prevent its going too far are re-
moved, so that in time it grows right
round through the unlucky animal's
flesh and provides a splendid double arm-
let for the native who owns the pig.
In Malekula, one of the larger islands
of the New Hebrides, many a married
woman was distinguished by a dark gap
in the ivory-white teeth of her upper
jaw, where the two middle incisors had
been knocked out with a stone. This
extremely unpleasant substitute for the
wedding ring is found in various parts of
Malekula. The operation is performed
by the old women of the tribe, who
greatly enjoy the revenge they are thus
enabled to take on the younger genera-
tion for tfce injury once inflicted by their
elders upon them.
By a good deal of worrying and a little
tobacco, I persuaded the villagers to
show me a mummy from one of their
"hamals," or sacred houses.
It appeared to be the stuffed skin of
a man fastened on poles that ran through
the legs and out at the shoulders. The
fingers of the hands dangled loose like
empty gloves. The hair was still on the
head, and the face was represented by a
rather cleverly modeled mask made of
vegetable fiber, glued together with
bread-fruit juice. In the eye-sockets the
artist had placed neat little circular coils
of cocoanut leaf, and imitation bracelets
were painted on the arms. The face and
a good part of the body were colored
bright red. The ends of the stretcher-
poles were carved into a curious likeness
of turtle heads. Standing up there in the
dancing light and shade of the trees,
against the high brown wall of the hamal,
the creature looked extraordinarily weird
and goblin-like. It had a phantom grin
on its face, and its loose skinny fingers
moved in the current of the strong trade
wind — it certainly looked more than half
alive.
MAKING A CONICAL HEAD
It was while I was staying with the
kindly and hospitable B s that I had
the chance of photographing what I be-
lieve has never been . photographed be-
fore— the making of a conical head.
A good many years ago certain men
of science who had procured skulls from
all parts of the world were struck with
the extraordinary egg-like shape of some
that came from Malekula. No one knew
much about the people who owned these
remarkable heads, and science forthwith
erected rather a pretty theory on the
basis furnished by the skulls, placing the
owners on the lowest rung of the human
ladder and inferring that they were
nearer to the ape than any other type at
that time known.
Later on some one happened to dis-
cover how it was that the skulls came to
show this peculiar shape, and the marvel
vanished when it was known that com-
pression in infancy was the cause. It is
still, however, a thing curious enough.
Several other nations compress their in-
fants' heads, but none seems to attain
quite such a striking result as the Male-
kulan, in those districts where the custom
is systematically practiced. A conical
head, when really well done, rises up to
a most extraordinary point, and at the
same time retreats from the forehead in
such a manner that one is amazed to
know the owner of this remarkable pro-
file preserves his or her proper senses,
such as they are. I could not hear, how-
ever, that the custom was supposed to
affect the intellect in any way.
"It would be hard to affect what they
haven't got," a trader observed on this
subject.
The conical shape is produced by
winding strong sinnet cord spirally about
the heads of young babies, and tightening
the coils from time to time. A piece of
plaited mat is first put on the head, and
the cord is coiled over this, so as to give
it a good purchase. The crown of the
i8
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
head is left to develop in the upward and
backward fashion that is so much ad-
mired. One fears the poor babies suffer
very much from the process. The child
I saw was fretful and crying and looked
as if it were constantly in pain ; but the
mother, forgetting for the moment her
fear of the strange white woman, showed
it to me quite proudly, pointing out the
cords with a smile.
She had a normally shaped head her-
self, and it seemed that she had suffered
by her parents' neglect of this important
matter, for she was married to a man
who was of no particular account. A
young girl who was standing beside her
when I took the photograph had evidently
had a more careful mother, for her head
was almost sugar-loaf-shaped. It is in-
teresting to know that this well-brought-
up young woman had married a chief.
STRANGE: WOODEN IMAGES OF ANCESTORS
A visitor to the island of Malekula,
New Hebrides, is greatly impressed by
the huge images in the amils, or village
squares; they are rudely carved, bar-
barously painted, and are called "temes,"
or images of the dead.
These images differ greatly from each
other. Some are made of wood, others
of the butt of a fern tree; some are
painted in scrolls or stripes, others in
rings; some display only a head, others
are rude effigies of the whole human
body; in some the eyes are round, in
others oval-shaped.
The colors employed in olden times
were coral lime, yellow ocher, a mineral
green, and charcial. Civilization, through
the trader, has supplanted the green and
yellow with the laundry blue and red
lead. They are more brilliant, no doubt,
but less in keeping with their surround-
ings.
A remarkable fact is, that although the
images are rude in design and out of all
proportion, they are real attempts at por-
traying the human figure. Every part is
carefully put in; yet, with the exception
of the boar's tusks on one, there is an
entire absence of the combination of the
human and animal, as, e. g., in the
Hindu pantheon. This is possibly due
to imperfect and rudimentary notions of
divinity, if these are at all gods. There
are no figures, like the Ephesian Diana,
denoting the nourishment of man and
beast from many-breasted Nature. There
are no many-headed or many-eyed em-
blems of the omnipotence or omniscience
of the gods. We are still among the
lowest and rudest forms of religion.
The people of Tanna, another island
of New Hebrides, are a remarkable
race and, in spite of their murderous
tendencies, have a great deal more char-
acter than the Malekulans. Queenland-
ers know them well, for thousands of
Tannese have been employed in the
Queensland sugar country from time to
time. Whatever they may have gathered
of civilization in Australia stays with them
but a little while after they leave. On
landing they generally take off all their
clothes, go back to their villages, paint
their faces, and take a hand in 'the latest
tribal row, only too glad to be back to
savagery again.
Like the Fijians, who were at one time
the fiercest and most brutal cannibals
of the Pacific, and who are now a peace-
ful and respecting nation, worthy of the
crown that owns them, the Tannese will
in all probability "train on" into a really
fine race, as soon as they can be re-
strained from continuously murdering
each other on the slightest provocation,
and induced to clean their houses and
themselves and live decently and quietly.
The yam gardens were weariful pict-
ures. In one that we passed nearly
all the women had blackened faces,
the Tannese sign of mourning. The
yam garden was a waste of parched
and powdery earth ; the bush around was
burned yellow and brown; the pale-blue
sky above quivered with the fierce mid-
day heat. Stolid, ugly, and streaming
with sweat, the women worked dully on,
breaking off for a few minutes to stare
and wonder at the visitor, and then con-
tinued their heavy task.
THE SAVAGE SOUTH SEAS
:MEN COMING TO SEE A WHITE CHILE
FASHIONS IN ERROMANGA, NEW HEBRIDES
STUDIES ON THE RATE OF EVAPORATION
AT/1 RENO, NEVADA, AND IN
THE SALTON SINK
BY PROFESSOR FRANK H. BIGELOW
U. S. WEATHER BUREAU
THE southwestern United States,
from southern Utah and Colo-
rado, including Arizona and
New Mexico, to southern California, is
the wonderland of North America. Here
are found several hundred square miles
of petrified forests, the surface of the
ground being covered with agate tree
trunks and chips ; the largest natural
bridge in the world, 500 feet span, 200
feet high, and 600 feet wide ; the greatest
examples of volcanic action, with 50
miles of lava in sheets 1,500 feet thick;
the most impressive villages of cave-
dwellings in the world ; the many-storied
cliff-houses of aboriginal architecture;
the communes or town republics and the
pueblos of the Acoma and Moki Indians ;
the most notable tribes of nomad Indians,
the Navajos and Apaches, who are the
best fighters of the savage world ; and the
remarkable ruins of the great stone and
adobe churches of the Franciscan mis-
sionaries.
The greatest wonder of all is the work
of erosion performed by the Colorado
River in its course from Utah to the
Gulf of California, a distance of 2,000
miles. At present it flows through the
Grand Canyon in a narrow gorge about
1,300 feet deep below the first level of
the valley ; but this valley itself is sur-
rounded by cliffs and pinnacles rising
5,000 to 6,000 feet above the water of
the river; also, passing from the rim
of the canyon along the open prairie to
the mesas, or tables, still marking the
ancient levels of the plateau, yet another
thousand feet must be added/"" The geo-
logical evidence shows that more than
30,000 feet of rock have been carried
away in some places, and that over a
region covering 200,000 square miles at
least 6,000 feet have been transferred to
the ocean.
The cutting of the gorge through 800
feet of black gneiss, 800 feet of quartz,
500 feet of sandstone, 3,600 feet of lime-
stones of various kinds, and 1,000 feet
of gypsum mixed with limestone is a
manifestation of water power hard to
appreciate.
The Colorado River drains the snow
water of the Rocky Mountains and the
plateau southwestward, and has gradually
transported this immense mass of material
into the Gulf of California. In ancient
days this gulf extended about 150 miles
farther north, between the San Jacinto
and the San Bernardino Mountain ranges,
and the beach lines of this old sea can be
readily traced upon the sides of the
mountains 15 feet above sea-level. The
river entered the old Gulf of California
at Yuma, Arizona, and it has gradually
built a delta of silt and debris directly
across the gulf, so that the northern end
of the ancient depression has been en-
tirely cut off from the Pacific Ocean and
its waters. This sink is now about 285
feet below sea-level in the Salton Sea,
while the delta floor is 20 to 40 feet above-
sea-level.
The waters of the Colorado River pass
through a narrow channel at the heads
above Yuma and flow along the top of
the delta in channels which are readily
shifted to the north or the south, this
being the natural way to spread more soil
over an ever-widening delta back. The
gradient of flow is steeper northward to
the Salton Sink than it is southward to-
the Gulf of California, and hence any
flowing of the river to the deep sink is.
THE SALTON SINK
Photo by F. II. Bigelow
THE: SALTON SEA AND THE: SALT CREEK TRESTLE:
Of the Southern Pacific Railroad, about 800 feet long. The water is too rough on calm days
to float pans; the waves are from 8 to 12 feet high in heavy weather .
accompanied by a series of rapids, in con-
sequence of which the soluble soil of the
delta is peculiarly subjected to rapid cut-
ting and erosion and the soil is trans-
ported northward in great masses. This
alternate flowing of the river to the north
and south has occurred many times in
geological history, the Salton Sea form-
ing suddenly and drying out more gradu-
ally by the slower process of evaporation,
though this is unusually rapid in that hot
and arid climate.
The desert regions east of the Coast
Range of southern California are caused
by the fact that the mountains cut off the
moist west winds from the Pacific Ocean,
while the entire region is too far west of
the Gulf of Mexico to receive any moist-
ure from its southerly winds.
TEN CROPS OF ALFALFA A YEAR
The latest overflow of the Colorado
River into the Salton Sink occurred in
1905-1906, as the result of certain irriga-
tion projects. The soil of the delta, being
the product of the mountains of Utah,
New Mexico, and Arizona, is particularly
fertile, when supplied with irrigated
water, on account of the continuous high
temperature, which ranges from 120° in
July and August down to about 20° to
30° in January and February. This is
shown by the fact that about ten crops
of alfalfa can be cut annually from the
same ground without fertilization, and
that crops of canteloupes are ready for
market as much as 30 days earlier than
any other region of the United States, all
other vegetable crops flourishing in the
same abundant ratio.
The Department of Agriculture finds
that its new date farms at Indio and
Mecca, just north of the Salton Sea, are
producing dates and figs of a very supe-
rior quality, and it is supposed that in
less than 20 years that region will pro-
vide all the dates consumed in the United
States, as much as 20,000,000 pounds an-
nually.
22
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photo by J. E. Church, Jr.
RENO RESERVOIR, TOWER NO. 2
Showing two six-foot evaporating pans and the landings for four two-foot pans
THE SALTON SINK
This fertile soil has attracted large
irrigation projects over the Imperial Val-
ley, south of the Sink, where 15,000 to
20,000 people are now engaged in putting
400 square miles of country under irriga-
tion by means of canals from the Colo-
rado River. It was while this canal
system was being constructed, with in-
adequate headgates at the river, in the
soluble soil, that in 1905 the headings
opened by wearing in the banks and let
the entire waters of the river flow down
the steep gradients to the north. The
Imperial Canal, the Alamo and the New
rivers became raging torrents and cut
away immense masses of country, which
was transported into the Salton Sink.
At Brawley the Alamo River was cut
down from a shallow channel to a gorge
60 feet deep, and it spread out many
hundred feet near the sea ; also the New
River, which at Brawley is 6 miles west
of the Alamo River, now has a bed 800
feet wide and 80 feet deep, whereas it
was lately only a shallow stream. The
entire system of canals constructed by
the California Development Company be-
came disorganized, many towns were in-
jured, and it is estimated that $400,000,-
ooo of property was in jeopardy.
To meet this emergency the Southern
Pacific Railroad Company undertook, in
connection with the Development Com-
pany and the U. S. engineers of the
Reclamation Service, to build suitable
levees to control the future course of the
Colorado River, and in February, 1907,
after several disappointing failures, this
was finally accomplished. The new levees
withstood the floods of June with a stage
of about 30 feet, and there is every reason
to believe that the Colorado River will be
permanently diverted to the southern
slopes of its delta instead of to the north-
ern, as was recently its course.
KNOWLEDGE OF THE RATE OF EVAPORATION
VERY NECESSARY
The result of this temporary flow of
the river to the Salton Sink was to make
a lake of fresh water about 45 miles long,
10 to 15 miles wide, containing 440
square miles of water surface, having a
depth of 80 feet in the middle.
In May, 1907, the surface of the sea
was 205 feet below sea-level, and in Octo-
ber it had fallen to about 207.5 feet- This
loss is due to evaporation, but the actual
evaporation should be made to include
the amount that has been added through
the flow of the Alamo and New rivers,
which has been quite considerable. Dur-
ing the past year, while the canals were
only partially repaired, more water
flowed to the sea than will be the case
after the beginning of 1908, when opera-
tions for irrigation will be fully resumed
for that season.
It has been supposed quite generally
that as much as 8 feet of the Salton Sea
would evaporate annually, though we
now have reasons to think it may not be
more than 4 or 5 feet, as will be shown
from the results of the Reno work. It
is evident that, as the sea evaporates, in
the course of a few years we shall have
a series of lakes of different sizes, and
that in general this sea gives us an un-
usually good opportunity to study the
subject of evaporation on a large scale
and under favorable conditions. Mr G.
K. Gilbert, of the Geological Survey, pro-
posed that the government should take
up this subject, because the theory of
evaporation in application to bodies of
water in the open is very unsatisfactorily
understood, as shown by the discordant
results of several researches along this
line.
The engineers of the irrigation projects
require to know how much a given area
of water surface will evaporate in a given
climate, in order that the dams may be
built at an economic height, and that they
may know how much water will be avail-
able for distribution to farmers. The
engineers of water-works systems for
large cities, especially in the arid West,
need such information in a reliable form
as a factor in their estimate of resources.
The meteorologists also require the same
knowledge to supplement their observa-
tions on precipitation. For example, in
the United States, east of the Mississippi
24
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
River, the precipitation and the evapora-
tion are about equal to each other — 40
inches per year; on the Rocky Mountain
plateau the precipitation is about 20
inches and the evaporation 60 inches, and
in the southwestern states the precipita-
tion is only 10 inches and the evaporation
80 inches. The available water is there-
fore derived from the melting snows of
the mountains, brought under control by
the rivers and the canals to the fertile
soils of the arid regions, and this means
the construction of storage basins, which
are subjected to intense evaporation.
Mr Gilbert's suggestion resulted in a
conference board from the U. S. Geolog-
ical Survey, the U. S. Reclamation
Service, and the U. S. Weather Bureau
visiting the Salton Sea and reporting that
the project of studying the laws of evap-
oration at the sea should be undertaken,
and that the work should be under the
immediate control of the U. S. Weather
Bureau.
There have been several important and
careful researches made regarding the
probable law of evaporation from small
pans, with the view of connecting the
amount of water delivered by a pan to
that given off by a lake or large body of
water in the same climatic conditions.
It is much to be desired that the law shall
so be expressed that from the given me-
teorological data of a locality the corre-
sponding amount of the loss of water in
a basin of any size can be computed.
Unfortunately the results of these re-
searches are by no means in agreement.
In view of the fact that an expensive
campaign is being planned at the Salton
Sea, to extend over several years, it
seemed prudent to attempt to gain some
better ideas regarding the physical prob-
lems involved before beginning the work
in the desert.
THE STATION AT RENO, NEVADA
After consideration it was decided to
set up at Reno, Nevada, a temporary ex-
periment -station, planned to bring out
the causes of the disagreements. In
summer the dryness of the climate at
Reno is about the same as at the Salton
Sea, and the amount of evaporation from
a small pan is nearly the same in amount,
nearly 8 feet per year ; but the discomfort
of working in the open is not nearly so
great, on account of its elevation, 4,500
feet above sea-level. Our experience
showed us that Reno possesses an un-
usually agreeable summer climate, with
cool nights, not very hot days, and plenty
of wind from the mountains to keep up a
very pleasant circulation of the air, espe-
cially in the afternoons.
We set up five towers, 40 feet high, by
August i, 1907, and continued regular
observations till September 15, by which
time we had secured all the records
needed for our preliminary studies, some
35,000 observations, including 100,000
readings of our instruments. There were
29 evaporating pans placed in position,
five 6-foot pans in the water or on the
ground near the base of the towers, and
twenty-four 2-foot pans on the stagings
above the surface. The records were
taken every 3 hours during the day, from
5 a. m. to 8 p. m., and readings were made
at i o'clock, just after midnight. These
included the temperatures of the water
surface, of the air at half an inch above
the water, and of the air at two feet above
the water of each pan. The vapor ten-
sions, dew-points, and the amount of
water evaporated were also on the
program. The wind velocity at different
heights, from the bottom to the top of the
towers, was observed, and some new
Pische evaporimeters were employed,
with the purpose of ultimately substi-
tuting them for the large evaporation
pans.
The serious trouble with all this class
of meteorological work is that there is no
suitable self-registering apparatus for re-
cording the wet-bulb thermometers or of
getting the vapor contents of the air con-
tinuously. The consequence is that we
must read the instruments many times
daily, in order to obtain any correct
knowledge of the variations of all these
elements with the heating and cooling of
the atmosphere in the course of the day,
THE SALTON SINK
26
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
and at present there is no way to avoid
this labor and expense. The physical ex-
ertion of climbing towers, carrying a bas-
ket of instruments along, making read-
ings all day, was not inconsiderable, as it
took from forty minutes to one hour to
do the work on a single tower. There
were five towers to attend to, and this
had to be repeated seven times every day.
We had the good fortune to incur no ac-
cidents of a personal nature, though sev-
eral thermometers were broken in the
operations.
The wind during the afternoon and
evening often reached 40 miles an hour,
and even 50 miles per hour, and on the
top of the towers it was no little task to
guard the delicate instruments against
injury in the violent gusts. The Sierra
Nevada mountains, 10,000 to 12,000 feet
high, poured down into the Reno Valley
a powerful current of cool air every day
with wonderful regularity, and this
caused the strong winds to prevail.
INTERESTING RESULTS
We succeeded in keeping up the cur-
rent reductions of the observations to an
advanced stage, and so gained an idea of
our results before leaving Reno, the 1 8th
of September. They were such as to
show clearly enough the source of the
discrepancies that have been mentioned.
For example, it was soon seen that the
evaporation from the pans on the top of
the towers was from two to three times
as much as at the foot of the towers, in
or near the water, and that there is a
regular progression from pan to pan.
On the other hand, in the dry field where
tower No. I was located there is no such
important difference, the evaporation
being practically the same all the way up
the tower. At tower No. 5, in the alfalfa
field, where the ground was wet from
irrigation, we found that the retardation
of evaporation was confined to 10 or 15
feet from the ground.
It became clear enough that the reser-
voir, which is about 1,000 feet long,
covers itself with a sheet of invisible
vapor about 30 feet thick, and that this
vapor acts like a blanket upon the fresh
evaporation rising from the water. Dur-
ing the process of evaporation there are
two principal stages : First, the water
must turn into vapor, and the amount
differs according to the temperature.
Thus, for o° centigrade I cubic centi-
meter becomes 211,000 cubic centimeters
of vapor; at 100° centigrade it becomes
1,658 cubic centimeters of vapor. Second,
these columns of fresh vapor must stream
off into the air by diffusion and mixture,
and the capacity of the air to receive it
depends upon its own temperature and
dew-point, which determine its vapor con-
tents. If the air is dry and the difference
between the dry-air temperature and
dew-point is great, there will be rapid
evaporation, but if small the evaporation
will be slow. The wind is an important
factor, because it brings new masses of
air, not so much saturated, over the
water surface, and thus keeps the super-
posed air more ready to receive the newly
evaporated vapor. There are at least
five factors to take into the account:
1. The diffusion factor — a function
of the height above the surface of the
water.
2. The temperature of the water and
its capacity to deliver vapor — a function
of its vapor pressure.
3. The capacity of the air to receive
vapor — a function of the difference be-
tween the dry air temperature and the
dew-point.
4. The velocity of the wind, the func-
tion being the square of the velocity.
5. The wind coefficient, being a func-
tion of the height above the ground.
A small pan in the open air, away from
a sheet of water, evaporates faster than
the same pan in like conditions located
within the blanket of vapor lying over
a lake, because these factors operate to-
gether differently. Hence it is evident
that the location of the experimental pan
relative to the water surface of a lake
must be fully taken into the account. The
many pans at Reno gave differing re-
sults, grading up and down the towers,
and from the center of the reservoir to
the distant dry fields, in such a way as
THE SALTON SINK
27
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
to leave no question of these facts. Pre-
vious researches have not taken sufficient
account of the locality of the small pans
in deriving their formulas, and they have
been discordant as a consequence.
The preliminary discussions of the
data, made since our return to Wash-
ington, show that we must depart from
the common Dalton Law in at least four
important particulars, and we shall pro-
ceed to test the new formula as fully as
possible within the next few years.
It is our purpose to erect two or three
towers at the Salton Sea, one high tower
on a small island about four miles from
the southern edge of the sea, to get some
idea of the behavior of the great vapor
blanket lying over that large water area.
We must know its depth and how it acts
over a large body of water, as compared
with the small Reno reservoir. There
will be two smaller towers in the sea, one
about one mile from the Salt Creek tres-
tle and projecting 20 feet from the sur-
face, and another in 50 feet of water and
flush with the surface. As the waters
recede under evaporation, in a few years
these sea towers will gradually become
land towers, and this will enable us to
study the working of the blanket from
the middle of the sea into the country —
that is, for large and for small lakes — in
the course of a few years. It is purposed
to invent, if possible, suitable apparatus
for self-registering the evaporation and
for recording the vapor contents of the
atmosphere.
There are, however, numerous and
serious difficulties to be overcome in the
carrying on the work at the Salton Sea,
and not the least is the hardship of en-
during the high temperatures of the sum-
mer as well as the loneliness of the iso-
lated life that must be experienced by the
observers. The officials of the Southern
Pacific Railroad — Mr R. H. Ingram, the
general superintendent of the Southern
California division, and Mr A. D'Heur,
the chief engineer — have courteously
agreed to cooperate with the U. S.
Weather Bureau in the construction and
maintenance of the piers, towers, and
houses needed for the investigations.
I was assisted at Reno, Nevada, by Mr
H. L. Heiskell of Washington, D. C., Mr
Geren, Mr Robeson of Reno, Professors
Minor and Church of the University, by
Messrs Pearson, Steffin, Beebe, Potthoff,
students, and by many citizens of the city
of Reno, to all of whom the Weather
Bureau is greatly indebted.
METHODS OF OBTAINING SALT IN COSTA
RICA
THE following series of illustra-
tions, showing the methods of
obtaining salt on the Pacific
coast of Costa Rica, were taken by Pro-
fessor Y. Fid Tristan of San Jose. Pro-
fessor Tristan is a member of the Na-
tional Geographic Society who lives in
Central America, and sends the pictures
to its Magazine that all the members of
the Society may see this quaint method of
getting salt.
There are onlv a few miles of railwav
in Costa Rica. Transportation is there-
fore expensive, but labor is cheap. While
the salt obtained in this primitive manner
is coarse, it answers most of the require-
ments of the people. Costa Rica is one
of the most interesting sections of the
Americas. The proportion of its white
population is large for a Latin American
country. Public instruction is free and
compulsory and the Costa Ricans are
among the most cultured of the American
peoples.
OBTAINING SALT IN COSTA RICA
29
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
PROVIDED WITH WOODEN SPADES THE PEONES GATHER THE SALTED EARTH INTO
LONG, NARROW HEAPS
THE HEAPS THUS MADE AND THE LOW WATER AT THE DISTANCE
OBTAINING SALT IN COSTA RICA
31
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
FILTERING OUT THE: SALT
The salted earth is unloaded into two wooden tanks, in the bottom of which a layer of
straw and sand has been placed. Salt water is poured over the earth and filters through the
straw and sand. The saturated water is collected into another tank buried under those which
are in sight. To ascertain the density of the solution a new laid egg is introduced into it.
The operation is concluded when the primitive areometer is nearly but not completely sub-
merged.
DIAGRAM TO EXPLAIN THE FILTER TANKS
OBTAINING SALT IN COSTA RICA
33
34
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
DR BELL'S MAN-LIFTING KITE
THROUGH the courtesy of Dr
Alexander Graham Bell, the
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGA-
ZINE is enabled to print the following
series of illustrations of his experiments
with his gigantic man-lifting kite, the
Cygnet. This kite was sent up in De-
cember, 1907, both with and without a
man. The pictures on pages 42-44 show
it aloft, carrying no weight, while those
on pages 49-52 illustrate the flight when
Lieutenant Selfridge, of the United
States Army, ascended to a height of 168
feet and remained in the air for over
seven minutes.
While Dr Bell's ultimate object is to
secure a flying machine that will support
itself in the air at a moderate rate of
speed,* the experiments with the Cygnet
* See "Aerial Locomotion, with a few notes
of progress in the construction of the Aero-
drome." By Dr Alexander Graham Bell, NA-
TIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, January, 1907.
have been mainly studies in stability.
The wonderful steadiness of this form of
structure is shown by the pictures and
especially by the fact that the Cygnet de-
scended from 1 68 feet to the 'water so
slowly and evenly that the man aboard
did not realize he was dropping until he
found the kite in the water. The kite
flew as easily with Lieutenant Selfridge
aboard as it had on the previous trial with
no load, and could undoubtedly have
borne a weight several times as great as
that of one man. Owing to the severity
of the winter in Baddeck, Cape Breton,
Nova Scotia, where these experiments
are being conducted, it has been neces-
sary to postpone further flights until the
spring, when the work will be resumed.
Dr Bell's next step will be to put a
powerful light motor on a modified
form of the Cygnet.
The photographs were taken by Mr
J. A. Douglas McCurdy.
PRACTICE: DRILL WITH A SMALL KITE
The water shield in the bow keeps the men comparatively dry
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
VIEWS OF THE AERODROME: SHED IN WHICH THE GIANT MAN-U^TING KITE,
THE CYGNET, is HOUSED
DR BELL'S MAN-LIFTING KITE
37
VIEW OF THE AERODROME SHED
Showing the raft with its long tilting arms backed up against the building to receive the giant
kite. The Cygnet placed on board the raft
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
DR BELL'S MAN-LIFTING KITE
39
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TOWING THE GIANT KITE, PREPARATORY TO SENDING IT ALOFT
When everything is ready for the release, the tilting arms of the raft (see pitcure, p. 37) are
raised, and the kite let go
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
views OF THE: KITE IN THE: AIR
Flying in a 3O-mile wind. The remarkable stability of the tetrah_dral structure in air is
illustrated by the pictures. For flying weight see p. 40
DR BELL'S MAN-LIFTING KITE
43
ANOTHER VIEW OF THE KITE ALOFT
he pull on the flying line was greater than could be measured, but considerably exceeded
210 pounds
44
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
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46 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
PICKING UP THE CYGNET
THE CYGNET SAFELY LIFTED ON TO ITS RAFT AND READY TO BE TOWED HOME
DR BELL'S MAN-LIFTING KITE
47
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
DR BELL'S MAN-LIFTING KITE
49
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
DR BELL'S MAN-LIFTING KITE
51
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
JUST BEFORE THE ASCENT
KITE WITH MAN ABOARD, FLYING AT A
HEIGHT OF 168 FEET
The kite remained in the air for about seven minutes, and then began to come down on
account of a decrease in the velocity of the wind. Its descent was so gentle and even that
Lieutenant Selfridge, whose view of the water in front was intercepted, did not know it was
dropping until it actually touched the water. Photos by Mr John Davidson.
MORE CHANGES OF THE
COLORADO RIVER
THE completion of the works at the
intake below Yuma early in Feb-
ruary, 1907, sent the -main current of the
Colorado River down the old channel,
which it had left empty during the
greater part of the previous year. This
channel lies near the eastern margin of
the delta, and actually cuts into the gravel
bluffs of the Sonoran mesa at three places
below the international boundary.
The lowest point at which the river
finally left- this mesa, at about 32° n'
North, is the center of interest of the
present note, for it marks the head of
tidal action, and also the location of a
depression in the eastern bank from
which a shallow trough extended south-
eastwardly to the shores of the Gulf east
of Montague Island. Ordinarily a series
of salt pools extend from within two
miles of the river down the depression to
the Gulf, being known as the Santa Clara
Slough.
During a visit to this region in March,.
1905, a great volume of flood water was
seen to be leaving the main channel and
making its wav to the Gulf through the
Santa Clara Slough, and the prediction
was hazarded that a shift of the cutting:
MORE CHANGES OF THE COLORADO RIVER
53
action of the water might send the prin-
cipal current to the sea in this way.*
Shortly after that observation was
made the entire stream was diverted into
the Salton basin for a time, leaving the
bed of the river bare for more than a
hundred miles. With the restoration of
recent conditions the Colorado resumed
its way to the Gulf, but in the mean time
such erosion and formation of bars had
taken place in the section affected by the
tides below the "Colony" mesa that the
main current flowed through the Santa
Clara Slough, if reports from three dif-
ferent sources are to be credited.
The consequences of this change are
somewhat momentous. The main mouth
of the river was formerly 20 or 30 miles
farther northwest of the new debouchure,
and with the converging shores of the
Gulf gave conditions which, with the
spring tides at from 30 to 40 feet, pro-
duced a marked bore, being felt many
miles upstream, both in the Colorado and
the Hardy. The new channel reaches
sealevel by a much more gradual descent
and without the strong current and con-
verging shores favorable to developing
the bore.
The new mouth will become the center
of a new series of mud flats, which fringe
the shores already for a distance of 50
miles. The deposition of silt will operate
to close the eastern channel between
Montague Island and the mainland,
which has long since ceased to be navig-
able and will soon afford material which
will be piled by the tides in the deeper
channel to the westward, \vith the final
result of filling it more or less com-
pletely, thus forming a brackish or saline
* Bull. Amer. Geog. Society. January, 1906.
lake comprising Sargents reach and the
Great Horseshoe Curve 50 or 60 miles
in length, into which the seepage waters
of the Hardy will flow, charged with the
salts picked up from the mud volcanoes
to the northward. Before the channel is
closed, however, the action of the tides
will carry salt water far up -the channels
of both the Hardy and the old estuary,
with a pertinent effect on the vegetation
on the extensive tide-washed flats.
The new eastern channel is one prob-
ably not previously occupied by the river
in its present condition, and the change
adds to the delta the triangular area
enclosed by the old channel below the
"Colony mesa" to the Gulf, and the new
channel, inclusive of great expanses of
mud flats, and a range of gravel dunes or
hillocks which find their culmination at
the extreme northern end of the triangle
immediately below where the new channel
takes off from the old one.
In addition to increasing the area of
the delta, serious disturbance of the plants
and animals over an area of several hun-
dred square miles may ensue. In a large
part of it the composition of the flora will
be totally altered. It is needless to say
that the meager agricultural operations of
the fewCocopah Indians who frequent the
region will be seriously disturbed. So far
as might be inferred from the recon-
naisance already made of the conditions
of flowage into the Laguna Maqutata, in
the extreme western portion of the delta,
no serious effect will be apparent in its
irregular filling and shrinking by evap-
oration.
D. T. MACDOUGAL,
Director of Botanical Research,
Carnegie Institution.
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
31.30
HONORS FOR AMUNDSEN
THE principal feature of the an-
nual banquet of the National
Geographic Society, December
14, was the presentation of the Hubbard
Gold Medal of the Society to Captain
Roald Amundsen by the Vice-President,
Hon. Charles W. Fairbanks. Several
hundred guests and members attended the
dinner, including representatives from
Argentine, Belgium, Bolivia, Denmark,
France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy,
Japan, Mexico, Norway, and Switzer-
land, and from all parts of the United
States. Toasts were responded to by
Hon. J. J. Jusserand, the French Am-
bassador ; Hon. James Bryce, the British
Ambassador ; Representative Theodore
Burton, of Ohio; Hon. Harvey D.
Goulder, of Cleveland, and Representa-
tive J. Hampton Moore, of Pennsylvania.
The President of the National Geo-
graphic Society, Dr. Willis L. Moore,
acted as toastmaster. The speeches fol-
low.
INTRODUCTION BY THE TOASTMASTER, THE)
PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL GEO-
GRAPHIC SOCIETY.
On January 13, 1908, the National Geo-
graphic Society will be twenty years old.
This organization, which is of such
comparatively recent inauguration, today
numbers a membership of over thirty
thousand thinking, educated, working
people. Its income is spent entirely in
the collection and the dissemination of
knowledge that we believe will work for
the betterment of humanity. We en-
deavor to treat of the earth, the waters
that cover it, the air that is above it,
the configuration of the earth, the bound-
aries of land and water; and then to
teach of the peoples that inhabit the
earth — their economic, their political, and
their social conditions. From our ros-
trum speak men who are masters of their
subjects. Through our Magazine we dis-
seminate their views throughout the
large membership of the Society. Our
object is to aid research and diffuse
knowledge.
As in ^warfare "it is the man behind
the gun," likewise in every peaceful en-
deavor it is still the man behind the gun ;
and, apropos of that, our Society takes
pleasure in the fact that among those who
direct the operations of this institution
there are found such names as Alexander
Graham Bell, Robert E. Peary, General
Greely, Admiral Chester, of the Navy,
Gen. John M. Wilson, of the Army, the
former Chief of Engineers. But the list
is long. I only refer to a few, so that you
may know who are your hosts tonight.
We, the members of the Board of Man-
agers and the members of the Society,
greet you and extend to you our hos-
pitality.
The first condition requisite to great
success in a man is a clear mind and a
strong body. Such a condition produces
as nearly as may be the perfect com-
posite of the man. We are here tonight
first to do honor to one who possesses
the strong body and the clear mind, and
an acute intellect. We wish to confer the
honor of this Society upon him. By
unanimous vote its Board of Managers
has directed that a medal shall be pre-
sented to Captain Roald Amundsen for
achieving the Northwest Passage and de-
finitely locating the Magnetic North
Pole ; and to still further do him honor
we are favored with the presence of one
who also represents the clear mind in
the strong body; for no man could rise
to the dignity of Vice-President of these
United States who does not possess those
qualities. Therefore our Society feels
honored by the presence of the Vice-
President, and I will introduce him to
present the medal to Captain Amundsen.
THE VICE-PRESIDENT, HON. CHARLES W.
FAIRBANKS
Mr President, Members of the Na-
tional Geographic Society, Ladies and
Gentlemen: I want to congratulate this
great Society upon what it has so
splendidly accomplished, upon the work
it is doing with such high intelligence
and such devotion. The field of its en-
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
CAPTAIN ROALD AMUNDSEN IN THE CABIN OF THE GJOA
deavor is as wide as human nature and as
all-embracing as the world itself.
Captain Roald Amundsen, the pleasant
duty devolves upon me to present to you
on behalf of the National Geographic
Society this gold medal. It is presented
to you because of what you have so
splendidly accomplished. It is in recog-
nition of your arduous and intelligent
service in the great North. It is because
of your scientific investigation with re-
gard to the Magnetic North Pole. You
have removed many of the doubts, much
of the theoretical assumption with respect
to the Magnetic North Pole and have
established well-authenticated fact with
regard to it — an achievement that is
yours and only yours since the history of
the world began.
This medal is presented to you further
because of the fact that you are the first
one to sail through the Northwest Pas-
sage in your own vessel. Many intrepid
and resourceful explorers have for more
than three centuries ineffectually at-
tempted what you in God's providence
have accomplished. There are many
names associated with the attempt to ac-
complish what you have achieved. Their
efforts were not crowned with the same
success which have crowned yours ; yet
they each and all served to reduce greatly
the zone of the unknown, and each and
all have in a measure contributed to the
triumph which finally is yours. I was
gratified to read in your modest account
of your own achievement the liberal
praise you gave to all who have devoted
their service to the accomplishment of the
Northwest Passage. You are honored
here in an especial degree.
It is a happy circumstance that there
are assembled at this hospitable board
tonight not only men distinguished in
HONORS FOR AMUNDSEN
57
science, in art, in literature, and in states-
manship in the United States, but here
are gathered the representatives of the
greatest countries upon this globe. The
representatives of the chief nations of
the earth are met here to do you honor.
It has seemed to me always, as I have
read the familiar story of the efforts
and sacrifice of the explorers of all coun-
tries in the Arctic regions, that there is
something in it of the heroic, when we
contemplate the countless money that has
been spent and the scores and scores of
lives that have been sacrificed in extend-
ing the boundaries of our knowledge in
that inhospitable quarter of the earth. I
have believed that those who have laid
down their lives there are entitled to the
same honor the soldier wins when he lays
his life down upon the battlefield of his
country.
It is a felicitous fact that a Norseman
should have first sailed through the
Northwest Passage in his own vessel.
We have a hospitality for him in this
country. Many of our countrymen who
dignify and honor American citizenship
are fellow-countrymen of yours.
As I said before, this medal is given to
you by this great Society because of what
you have accomplished in science and in
the extension of the domain of geo-
graphic knowledge. It is also presented
to you because of the esteem of the So-
ciety for you personally. I have the very
great honor, my dear sir, to present to
you this mark of the respect of the Na-
tional Geographic Society of America.
RESPONSE; BY CAPT. ROAI.D AMUNDSEN
Mr Vice-President, Mr President, and
Members of the National Geographic
Society, Ladies and Gentlemen : I am
highly honored and justly proud of
the very high distinction which the
National Geographic Societv so gra-
ciously has bestowed upon me in pre-
senting me with the Society's gold
medal. This I have had the honor to
receive from the hands of the Vice- Presi-
dent of this great Republic. I am no less
grateful for the Society's demonstration
of honor by electing me an honorary
member of this the largest geographic
society in the world. For this splendid
token of distinction I have the great
honor to express my very sincere grati-
tude to the members of the Society,
among whom there are so many brilliant
gentlemen, famous for achievement in
scientific research. I see here tonight one
whom I think I can say is the most ex-
cellent of the scientific explorers in the
United States — in fact the most experi-
enced scientific Arctic traveler of the
day — Commander Robert E. Peary. I
thank you from the bottom of my heart
and wish the National Geographic So-
ciety all success.
THE TOASTMASTER
In the development of geographic
knowledge on this continent there was
one nation that was preeminent in ex-
ploring the vast interior of what was a
great wilds only a hundred years ago.
The interior of our country has pre-
served the names of many of those who
first explored it, and given them to its
cities. Marquette, Joliet, and La Salle
will always be famous as the names of
French explorers who entered at the
mouth of the Saint Lawrence and passed
through the Great Lakes and down the
long stretches of the Father of Waters.
Now it is appropriate that the ambassa-
dor from that nation which had so much
to do with carrying a Christian civiliza-
tion into the interior of this continent
should be here to honor us with his pres-
ence. He will speak to the toast of the
"Northmen's Travelings."
THE AMBASSADOR FROM FRANCE,
HON. J. J. JUSSERAND
Once more a deed of valor, of pluck,
and endurance has been performed by a
Norseman. Valor, pluck, and endurance
are highly appreciated in America, where
so many connoisseurs and practicers of
the same exist. It is in the nature and
fitness of things that a Norseman be here
tonight and be applauded and recom-
pensed, as he has been, not only by the
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
medal, but by the eloquent words pro-
nounced by the Vice-President of the
United States and by the President of
this Society.
Captain Amundsen followed the ex-
ample of his ancestors. His ancestors
may be proud of him, and he in turn may
truly, when he goes back in thought to-
wards the origins of his nation, be proud
of his ancestors — those ancestors who
started from the distant north and went
to nearly all parts of the world.
And as in those days all the parts of
the world were equally unknown, as
there was no National Geographic So-
ciety— we have just heard that it has ex-
isted only twenty years and I speak of
twelve centuries ago — in those days when
the whole world was unknown, a Norse-
man when he started would throw a
feather in the air, and in the direction
which the wind impressed on that feather,
there he would go and discover.
Starting thus, the Norsemen went in
every direction, as the wind and their
pluck, told them. They went to Russia;
they founded the Kingdom of Novgorod ;
they were settled along the tributaries of
the Black Sea. They took service under
the Byzantine emperors, and some of
them stationed in Greece inscribed their
names on antique marble lions, as a
•sentry would nowadays (though forbid-
den) inscribe his name on his box. Those
lions still exist, and many of you may
have seen them in Venice, where they
were transferred by Morosini in the sev-
enteenth century, and where, sentries
in their turn, they keep watch in front
of the Arsenal main gate. They still
'"bear on their marble skins the names in
runic characters of the Scandinavian de-
fenders of Byzantium.
The same sea rovers, following, as
-they said, the "swans' path," the "whales'
road," went north and went west, settling
in France, in England, in Iceland, and
•Greenland, and visiting America.
I do not think there is any doubt that
-the first European settlers were men from
the north, sailing in those long wooden
•>boats, of which several are preserved in
.Norway, having been found in tumuli.
For some time it was doubted that such a
feat was a possible one; but the experi-
ment has been tried in our days and has
proven successful. At the time of the
Chicago Exposition Norsemen again
crossed the Atlantic in the same sort of
boat as their forefathers. An accurate
copy of one of the viking ships dug from
the Norway mounds, manned by the
same number of men, with the same
number of oars, having the same single
mast, and no deck, started from Bergen,
crossed the Atlantic, where it met some
very rough weather, was for some time
considered as lost, but it was not lost at
all and it arrived in New York quite
safely, the men having never had a
moment's anxiety. That ship still ex-
ists. It is to be seen in Chicago, and in
that big city, where there are so many
interesting objects to be seen, none is
more interesting than this Norsemen's
boat.
It is a great honor for me to have been
invited to address you and invited in the
words your President used. He recalled
in touching words my compatriots' con-
tribution to a better knowledge of this
country. To this there is no doubt they
contributed, and the memory of such men
as Laudoniere, Joliet, La Salle, Mar-
quette, Bienville, and several others
certainly deserves to be cherished, as
it is by the National Geographic Society.
Some of the earliest maps of the North-
ern portion of this continent are French
maps, drawn by hand, and they are pre-
served at our Ministry of Foreign Af-
fairs, in Paris. There was, however, a
period in French history when the
French had a kind of fame that now, I
dare say, they have no more. At the
time of my youth Frenchmen were fa-
mous for their ignorance of geography.
This fame we have lost, but I hope we
have some other kinds of fame to console
us for the loss of that one. For we too
have since then emulated, not without
some share of success, the deeds of our
ancestors. We have begun again to dis-
cover countries. The North has not been
our special department ; it has rather been
that of Norsemen, of Americans and
HONORS FOR AMUNDSEN
59
Cooking vessel of the Eskimo at King Williams Land made from copper sheeting of
one of Sir John Franklin's vessels ; about 15 inches long.
Eskimo toys; these are all in miniature, the snow shovel being about 8 inches long.
To the left of it are seen 4 dolls made from wood and bone ; then an imitation Krag-Jorgen-
sen rifle, a spinning top, and a tambourine. Lying at the base is a toy with which the children
amuse themselves by slinging the stick upward and catching it on one of the holes of the
larger pieces. Photos by Captain Amundsen.
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
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HONORS FOR AMUNDSEN
61
ESKIMO ENCAMPMENT, KING WILLIAMS LAND
Englishmen ; and let us not forget that
young, elegant and plucky Duke of the
Abruzzi, a worthy compatriot of Colum-
bus and Vespucci, and who was recently
in your midst. Some new expedition led
through air or through water, by some,
maybe, among the men present here to-
night, will certainly in the near future
gain the first sight of the long-sought
Xorth Pole. We traveled mainly in
•other lands; and many parts of Asia,
Africa, and South America, owing to
French travelers, are no longer a blank
on the map, and "Timbuctu, the mys-
terious," has no longer any mystery.
Considering so many expeditions un-
dertaken for the sake of mankind at large
by men from every land, undeterred by
any dangef, one goes back in thought to
the time when mythical Saint Brandan,
the Celtic Saint, started in his leather
boat across the great ocean-sea to dis-
cover, and actually did discover, the
island of Paradise.
Captain Amundsen and his peers
make, in their way, somewhat similar
journeys. The Geographic , Society's
guest tonight will not, I am sure, con-
tradict me when I say that, amid the ice,
while enduring hard privations and suf-
ferings, he too has discovered the island
of Paradise ; for to men of heart Para-
dise is nothing else than duty fulfilled.
THE TOASTMASTER
Some years ago there appeared in
public print a book on American institu-
tions written by a foreigner. Other for-
eigners, especially English, had been to
this country. They had remained the
length of time necessary for the arrival
and departure of a ship, and then had
written works on America and American
customs ; so when this publication on the
political conditions of America first ap-
peared it was thought to be a work of the
same superficial character as those that
had preceded it. But as it was read it
awakened interest; as it was studied it
commanded admiration, and in course of
time Bryce's "American Commonwealth"
became the standard text-book on the po-
litical institutions of this country. It was
62
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
a leaven that was distributed at the right
time and it is now bearing a splendid
fruition. Millions of young patriotic
Americans have received their greatest
inspiration from that work. They have
learned not only of the strength of the
American Republic, but, what is better,
they have learned from that great work
its weaknesses. Forewarned is fore-
armed, and today I .venture to say there
is', many a man in .the national halls of
legislation who is a wiser legislator ; there
is many a man casting his ballot who
today will cast it on the side of righteous-
ness and good government because he
read that work written by a fair, im-
partial, analytical mind ; and the National
Geographic Society is glad to recognize
in that author tonight the Ambassador
from Great Britain, who will speak to us
on the subject of geography.
THE BRITISH AMBASSADOR,
HON. JAMES BRYCE
Mr Vice-President, Mr President,
Members of the National Geographic So-
ciety, Ladies and Gentlemen : I thank you,
Mr President, for your very friendly and
cordial reference to myself, for which I
am most grateful. Perhaps, however,
you will allow me to enter a very mild
and deferential protest against one term
which you applied to me. No English-
man, I hope, considers himself when in
the United States to be a foreigner.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a very
interesting and a very cheerful occasion.
It must be a cheerful occasion to you who
have just been informed that your So-
ciety now has reached more than thirty
thousand members, which I think must
be equal to all the geographic societies of
Europe put together. You have an
abundant revenue which you well spend
on the purposes of geography. The oc-
casion is to many of us particularly en-
joyable on account of the presence of a
distinguished explorer from a nation
which has great claims upon the recogni-
tion of geographers. He is of the nation
whence came the Icelander Eric the Red,
who was the first discoverer of America,
and who was none the less the discoverer
of America because he did not know he
had discovered it. And Commander
Amundsen is also the fellow-countryman
of, I think, the man who performed the
most extraordinary feat of daring and
endurance in the pursuit of geographical
knowledge that the history of the world
records, Dr Fridtjof Nansen.
Nevertheless, I always feel a little
touch of sadness when I am in a com-
pany of people devoted to geography, be-
cause geography is to me by far the most
attractive an'cl enjoyable of all pursuits,
and I have a misgiving that I mistook my
vocation when I took to history and poli-
tics and did not become a traveler and a
geographer. Is there any study or pur-
suit which has so many sources of enjoy-
ment and is altogether so attractive as the
study of geography.
Geography, to begin with, is one of
those things which everybody can follow.
In many branches of science now the
amateur has a hard time. Science has
reached such a point of specialistic de-
velopment that an amateur has practically
no chance of making discoveries. But in
geography we can all do something.
Everybody can do a little bit of explora-
tion, and make it thorough. I don't
doubt you all have even done so in the
case of some part of the country which
was within your reach, and that you have
succeeded in knowing a bit of the sur-
face of this earth better than anybody
else knew it before. That is something
to say in an age like this.
In the next place geography has the
great attraction and the immense interest
of being the meeting point of all the
natural sciences. Geology, botany, min-
eralogy, zoology, meteorology, some
branches of physics, such as electricity
and magnetism, and of course astronomy
also, all touch and flow into geography.
It is their meeting point; it takes some-
thing from each of them and gather
together into one center for its investiga-
tions knowledge drawn from these dif-
ferent scientific lines of inquiry which
bear upon the constitution of our planet.
HONORS FOR AMUNDSEN
GEOGRAPHY is THE; TELEPHONE; EXCHANGE:
OF THE:
And, lastly, geography has the unique
interest of being the meeting point of the
sciences of nature and the sciences of
man. What is it, indeed, except a record
of all those forms of natural environment
which have made man what he is ; which
have guided his development ; which have
caused the differences of races; which at
every point have influenced his march in
one direction or another; which have
given him the various forms of institu-
tions ; which have developed certain fac-
ulties in certain races along certain lines,
and which have impressed upon the
divers stocks of mankind as they stand
now that variety in which the interest of
the study of human nature so largely con-
sists. It is this which makes geography
the center to which the sciences of nature
on the one hand and the sciences of man
on the other converge.
Perhaps the greatest progress that has
been made of late years in the study of
history has consisted in bringing to bear
upon it all the data which geography sup-
plies, and in showing how much every na-
tion has owed and must continue to owe
to the geographical conditions under
which it lives. The relations of geog-
raphy to history make a fascinating sub-
ject, and if we had not many speeches
looming up before us tonight I could will-
ingly have followed it out.
There is just one drawback or defect
which it has seemed to me attaches to this
our favorite science. Its range is limited
and is being narrowed. The field open to
the geographer is no longer, as it might
have been called five hundred years ago,
practically infinite and inexhaustible. On
the contrary, we are using up the world
very fast. I suppose some of the mem-
bers present remember what the maps of
the world were like sixty years ago. I
recollect when the whole center of Africa
was practically a blank. In the middle of
it there were marked upon the map a
number of little hillocks, meant to indi-
cate the mountains of the Moon, with
figures of lions and elephants scattered
here and there. Now the Ruwenzori has
actually been climbed.
I remember an ancient terrestrial
globe, twirling which and poring over it
as it twirled I spent many happy hours,
which showed for northwestern America
scarcely anything except lines marking
the voyages of Cook and Vancouver, and
for northeastern Asia very little except
the lines which traced the voyages of
your illustrious countryman, Mr Am-
bassador from France, the famous navi-
gator La Perouse.
But things have been greatly altered.
Now there is no part of the earth's sur-
face about which we do not know a great
deal. Hardly anything is left for the
imagination. Moreover, in those days
the literary traveler was able to tell any
traveler's tale he pleased. Those of you
who have written books of travel, and I
have no doubt there are some present,
well know what is the temptation to the
author to improve upon and amplify what
he has seen in a little-known country.
When I think of what that temptation is
and of how often one has to abstain from
exaggerating and giving a better turn to
something one has seen, I feel like Lord
Clive when, in describing the enormous
opportunities he had had of increasing his
wealth at the expense of the people he
was conquering in India, he said, "I stand
amazed at my own moderation."
The travelers of the future will have no
such chance as some of us have had and
some of us have used, let us hope, with
moderation in embellishing the narra-
tives of our explorations. I am afraid
that the poets and all those who need im-
agination, who use imagination in
literature, must suffer where there is
nothing unknown left in the world.
But we must make the best of it.
We must recognize that our planet after
all is limited. What you must begin to
do is what has to be done in those parts
of the West when the good lands have all
been taken up and when it is impossible
any longer to get virgin soil for cultiva-
tion. You must begin to apply intensive
methods of cultivation. You must ex-
amine all your territory more thoroughly,
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
applying all the knowledge you can draw
from sciences like geology, botany, and
meteorology.
Your National Geographic Society has
fortunately a very great and wide field
open to it on this continent of North
America. You and the Republic of
Mexico, whose representative, my friend,
Mr Creel, I am glad to see present to-
night, have on this vast continent of
North America, as we have also up in
Canada, an enormous field open in which
to conduct a minute scientific study, and
the National Geographic Society may
look forward to many, many years or cen-
turies of useful activity in tracing down
the geographical conditions, the natural
history, and the resources and the rain-
fall and other climatic conditions of this
enormous territory.
GEOGRAPHICAL SURGERY
You have also a new field open which
seems to be one of peculiar, and indeed
novel, interest. I do not quite know what
to call it, whether to call it "Remedial
Geography" or "Geographical Surgery."
It is the taking of the surface of our
earth and executing upon it various sur-
gical operations intended to improve it
and make it more useful for the serv-
ice of man. You have embarked in some
enormous works on this continent of that
nature. You have dealt with the lower
course of the great River Colorado, and
have contemplated the making of an in-
land sea in a region which lies a little
below the level of the ocean near that
stream. You are meditating an enormous
enterprise in the improvement of your in-
ternal navigation, proposing to construct
a great canal and to improve that gigantic
river which intersects the middle of your
continent — endeavoring to turn it into a
more complete and deeper channel for
navigation than it has heretofore been.
If you accomplish that work, you will
have done a thing of which earlier ages
might indeed have dreamed, but which
nothing but your wealth and the resourses
of modern science could have rendered
possible.
And, lastly, you have embarked on that
splendid enterprise in the Isthmus of
Panama. One may say that all these proj-
ects come under the head of what may
be called "Creative Geography." In at-
tempting this creative policy you are
making the world more habitable and
profitable for all men. The world is no
doubt using up its capital at a very rapid
rate. Everywhere minerals and forests
are being exploited, perhaps too fast and
too recklessly. Here the forests are dis-
appearing swiftly, and the same holds
true of Norway. So both you here and
we in Britain are using up our metals and
our coals very fast. It is quite time that
scientific geographers should come in and
take stock of these resources and warn
the nation, as I am happy to see that the
President has already done in very em-
phatic, but not too emphatic, language, of
the necessity of conserving all your nat-
ural resources and replacing those which,
like the forests, can be replaced.
These are great functions for the Na-
tional Geographic Society. It has a wide
and useful field before it which it has
shown that it knows how to work for the
benefit of science and of the nation.
I appreciate the honor of having been
called to address you and I thank you on
behalf of your guests of tonight. I will
venture to wish all prosperitv and success
to the National Geographic Society.
THE TOASTM ASTER
The American forests are under the
charge of the Agricultural Department.
The American forests include areas that
in themselves alone are sufficient to sup-
port a mighty empire. The Department
of Agriculture controls this vast domain,
conserves it and protects it, and also has
many other important functions : It fights
the ravages of insect pests that I do not
hesitate to say would be more destructive
than the ravages of the army of almost
any invading foe. It guards the purity
of our food supply. It studies the dis-
eases of plants and animals and checks
them. It sends its explorers into the far
reaches of the earth to gather plants and
animals that may be made economical
and profitable to the American people. It
develops and it teaches improved methods
of husbandry that add hundreds of mil-
HONORS FOR AMUNDSEN
lions of dollars to the wealth of the
American people. It carries on many
lines of research. It distributes knowl-
edge very much as our own Geographic
Society does. It forecasts, as you know,
the coming of the wind and the storms ;
and it may be interesting tonight for me
to say that only yesterday, as the result
of one of the lines of experimentation
carried on under the department, an ob-
servation made at an altitude of four
thousand feet at the experimental ob-
servatory at Mount Weather showed the
curious anomaly of 38 degrees tempera-
ture, while the surface temperature in
Washington showed only 24 degrees — 14
degrees warmer in the upper layers of the
air. The forecast without that upper air
observation would have been snow to-
day. But it was apparent to the fore-
caster that snow could not come from or
through that extremely warm stratum of
air. This is one of the lines of experi-
mentation that is adding new knowledge
to us in a geographic sense.
Now the responsibility for that govern-
ment department, so beneficent to the'
American people in all of its purposes, lies
in the foresight, the wisdom, and the
statesmanship of the Senators and Repre-
sentatives of the Federal Congress. They
have never yet failed to give their cordial
support to scientific researches when it
meant something to benefit the American
people; hence the United States Con-
gress appropriates money — many times
the amount of any other country — for the
development and the diffusion of knowl-
edge.
Now just a word, if I may, because the
Secretary of that department is not here ;
and that is that that institution is presided
over by the greatest practical as well as
theoretical agriculturist, I believe, that
the world has yet produced.
Unfortunately Senator Beveridge is in-
disposed and is unable to respond to the
toast of the American forests. I look
over these faces and I hardly find one that
I would call upon without preparation to
respond to that toast.
Briefly, it is certain that the welfare
of posterity depends upon the protecting
and conserving of these vast forest do-
mains. They certainly do much to aid in
restraining the floods. They may not
change or alter the amount of precipita-
tion, but without any question they do
conserve that precipitation. They do re-
strain the rainfall on the various water-
sheds. They do render less destructive
the floods that come from a given precipi-
tation. The meteorologists are not cer-
tain but what the forests actually have an
effect upon the thermal conditions, and
therefore upon the rainfall itself.
Some recent experiments we have had
made of the temperature over the surface
of the earth as modified by the earth's
covering have shown some very startling
results. As an illustration, with con-
tiguous surfaces that were precisely at the
same level, thermometers exposed two
feet above the surface and not a hundred
yards apart would show over vegetation
seven degrees lower temperature than
over a sandy surface. Many times ther-
mometers exposed over thickly covered
vegetation at night would fall far below
the freezing-point, while the temperature
over the denuded surface would be much
above the freezing-point. Hence it may
be that the forests themselves, or the de-
nuding of the forests, have really had an
effect on the climate itself. The impor-
tance of conserving these great areas is
conceded by nearly every one. I believe
the nation has begun amply early by its
wise legislation to protect these great
areas for the benefit of the American peo-
ple.
I remember hearing at one time of a
banquet at which speeches were made
with relation to the conserving of the
waters of the Clyde. At the table there
was a young American midshipman, who
had partaken probably a little more of his
cups than he should have done, so that he
was not probablv as politic in his remarks
at a foreign table as he might have been.
He arose and said : "Gentlemen, the Clyde
would not form a gargle in the mouth of
the Mississippi." " Now the Father of
Waters will be responded to by one prob-
pblv who is better qualified to respond to
that toast than anv other man in the
United States, the Honorable Theodore
Burton.
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
THE FATHER OF WATERS. BY HON. THEo- those which make for modern progress,
DORE BURTON the Mississippi far excels them all.
The name "Father of Waters," or The most notable characteristic of the
"Father of Running Waters," was first Mississippi is its infinite variety, mam-
given by the Chippewa Indians, located fested ahke m products, climate, soil
south and west of Lake Superior, because and population. This is partially due to
they regarded the river as the greatest the fact that, unlike most of the other
in the world. The French explorers ac- leading rivers of the earth, it flows from
cepted this name, May-see-see-bee, and north to south> and nearly m a direct lme-
since that day this appellation has been This same variety is exhibited in the
regarded not as a local exaggeration of motives and great events which are
the aborigines, but as a correct desig- chronicled in the history of its discovery
nation for this mighty river.
and the early settlement of the valley. It
It is not only customary but appropri- has been sometimes said that Vespticius,
ate to speak of the Mississippi in super- in the year 1498, passed by the mouth of
latives. True, it is surpassed in some the Mississippi, but the records of his
voyages are of such uncertain au-
thenticity that we cannot rely
upon them. Other Spanish ex-
plorers— Pineda in 1519, Nar-
vaez and De Vaca in 1528 — saw
the mouth of the Mississippi, but
did not enter the promised land.
The first expedition to cross the
river or travel extensively upon
its waters was that of De Soto;
his included the flower of the
Castilian youth, and was actuated
by cupidity, the discovery of the
Mississippi in early May, 1541,
being a mere incident.
Entirely different in nature
particulars by other streams. Its drain-
ESKIMO COOKING POT MADE FROM STONE,
AT KING WIUJAMS LAND
were the French explorations of
132 years later. Father Marquette, in
age area is not so large as that of the 1673, was moved by religious zeal,
Amazon or the Nile, and is equaled if and when ordered to proceed toward
not excelled by those of the Obi, the the river wrote of "the happy neces-
Congo, and the Rio de la Plata. There sity of exposing his life for the sal-
are perhaps ten or twelve rivers that vation of those nations and particu-
carry to the sea a greater volume of lad for the Illinois » He d down
water han does the Mississippi. In the from the mouth of ^ ^isconsin to
population of the area tributary to it it the mouth f h Arkansas, starting
is exceeded by the Ganges and by at least .,, ... '
one river of China. The traffic that is out wlth . thf suPPosltl™ that the
borne upon its waters is far exceeded by pat northerly portion of the river
that of the Rhine, the Volga, and by flowed to the Gulf of California
other minor rivers of Europe and of the or the Pacific Ocean. His expedi-
United States. But in all the essential tlon may be termed a discovery, be-
qualities which belong to a great river cause 'li established the identity
and a great river valley, as well as in between the northerly and southerly
HONORS FOR AMUNDSEN
MONUMENT
IN MEMORY OF SIR JOHN
FRANKLIN
Erected on King Williams Land, where the
relics of his party were found
portions of the Mississippi. Finally, in
1 86 1, we have the voyage of La Salje,
the most untiring and enthusiastic of all
the explorers of the West, prompted by
desire for adventure, by love of trade, and
the wish to add to the domains and in-
crease the glory of France. He passed
from the mouth of the Illinois to the very
delta of the Mississippi.
Time would fail me if I were to speak
of the various influences of different na-
tionalities on the Mississippi River. The
Spanish, French, and English all have
joined in giving its magnificent valley
that cosmopolitan population which is
typical of strength and progress the world
over.
It was inevitable that this splendid
empire should belong to one nation. It
was made to be both a geographical and
a political unit. In the early days of the
Republic this ultimate unity was con-
stantly kept in mind. When, later in our
historv, an effort was made for the sev-
ESKIMO AT HERSCHEL ISLAND
erance of the states bordering upon its
waters, those who made that attempt
stood athwart the pathway of destiny.
Their embattled legions could not suc-
ceed, for it was fate that the valley of the
Mississippi should be part of a united
whole, and that the Mississippi River
should flow on to the sea through one
great country. Its valley is now, and must
in greater degree in the future, assume a
preeminent position as the heart of the
nation, the source of its great political
movements, and the most progressive
portion of the globe. Approximately
two-fifths of the area of the United States
and half of its population belong to this
valley.
NO LONGER A HIGHWAY OF COMMERCE
Among the great problems of common
interest to all the inhabitants of the val-
ley, the foremost is that of navigation.
In the ante-bellum days, the Mississippi
was one of the world's great waterways.
But for thirty years navigation there has
been in its decadence, a condition which
has been very correctly depicted by our
68
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
foremost American humorist in his book,
"Life on the Mississippi," written twenty-
five years ago. Models of boats have not
been improved ; towns have been shut off
from connections by railway tracks ; facil-
ities for loading and unloading are
scarcely better than in De Soto's day ;
but with the increase of transportation
and the recognition of the inadequacy of
present agencies and facilities there is no
doubt that the time has come when an
effort must be made to restore this river
to the position it once occupied as a great
artery of commerce. And it is perhaps
not too bold a conjecture to foretell that
the question whether transportation shall
be more and more conducted by rail, or
whether the rivers of the country shall
bear an increasingly important part, will
be worked out by trial upon the Missis-
sippi River and its chief tributary, the
Ohio.
PREVENTION OF FLOODS BY RESERVOIRS
Another subject which will arouse
attention with reference to the Missis-
sippi is the prevention of the enormous
floods which create such devastation year
by year. Great progress has been made
in this regard. The method most relied
upon has been that of building levees.
In this connection I may say that of late
a claim has been made that by the im-
pounding of the waters in the upper por-
tion of the Mississippi and in its tribu-
taries the force of these inundations may
be broken. This plan was dismissed as
chimerical by the engineers of fifty years
ago, but it is again worthy of careful
consideration at this time, since topo-
graphical surveys now give a better
knowledge of the subject. That which
seemed entirely impossible in the nine-
teenth century may be very easy of
achievement in the twentieth.
Again, while it may be in part a dream
at present, effort should be made for the
clarification of the waters of the Mis-
sissippi. The chief contributor that
makes it a muddy stream is the Missouri,
and it has been estimated that each year
four hundred million tons of silt are car-
ried along the bed of the river toward the
sea — a quantity comparable with and per-
haps even greater than the amount of
excavation required for the construction
of the Panama Canal. Not in a day, nor
yet in a year, but in the generations to
come, we may hope that this river will
be so bettered by the protection of banks
and by treatment of soil in the adjacent
lands as to remove its present quality of
muddiness.
Another problem is the preservation of
forests, not only for the sake of the tim-
ber supply, but for the moderation of the
discharge of waters into the river. Still
another, pertaining to many portions of
the basin, will be the conservation of
waters so that the lands where rainfall
does not now exist may be so supplied by
irrigation as to open up hundreds of mil-
lions of acres for settlement. With great
rapidity the resources of this country
have been exhausted. It is now time to
encourage the practice of economy and
conservation. The marvelous wealth of
this valley should be preserved for future
generations, and provision should be
made with great care for the maintenance
of that equal opportunity which ought to
be the birthright of every citizen of the
Republic, but which monopolization at
present threatens.
I congratulate this Society for the in-
terest displayed this evening in the con-
servation and utilization of our resources.
I am glad to hear a note of warning
sounded, and I hope that by your activ-
ities you may exert a beneficent influence
in this direction equal to that which you
have exerted in other branches of en-
deavor.
THE TOASTMASTER
In creating the Inland Water Ways
Commission for the purpose of studying
this great project for the improvement
of the Mississippi, the President honored
this Society by selecting for the Secretary
of that organization one who for years
has been one of the most active workers
in this institution. I will introduce Dr
W J McGee to say a few words.
HONORS FOR AMUNDSEN
Dr McGee outlined the objects of the
Commission, and referred to the fact that
the present agitation to make our rivers
more useful to the country is the third
waterway movement in our history; the
second, directed by Albert Gallatin and
encouraged by Thomas Jefferson (then
Secretary of State and President, respec-
tively) 99 years ago, unhappily came to
naught ; but the first agitation, started by
George Washington on the Potomac
River, led directly to the Annapolis Con-
ference of 1786, and thence to the Con-
stitutional Convention of 120 years ago,
in which the Nation found being.
The toastmaster then introduced Mr
Goulder as follows :
Some years ago a young man living in
the Lake region conceived the idea that
he would like to study for the profession
of the law. Did he enter a law school?
No. He shipped before the mast. He
sailed for two years on a sailing vessel,
learning every rope and part of its mech-
anism. From stoker to captain he learned
all the various duties of navigating a
great steamship, and then he began the
study of law, and in course of time be-
came the great admiralty lawyer of the
Lake region. He knows all the sailing
courses ; he knows every port and harbor
in the Great Lake region, no matter how
small, and is himself interested in vessel
properties. I shall ask the Hon. Harvey
Goulder, of Cleveland, to respond to the
toast of the "Five Inland Seas."
THE FIVE INLAND SEAS. BY HON. HARVEY
GOULDER
You have given me a topic, fit subject
for a volume, embracing as it does the
grandest industrial help to a nation and
to the world which history presents. No
man may contemplate the use of the Great
Lakes, the five inland seas, and their far-
reaching effect, without being inspired
with greater courage for the future of
his own environment.
Geographically speaking, these five
great inland seas, with their river con-
THE HEAD OF AN ESKIMO FISHING SPEAR
The fisherman thrusts the weapon across the
fish's body, which is held by the three
prongs.
nections and outlet, constitute the St.
Lawrence system. With the exception
of Lake Michigan they mark or line the
boundary between us and our friendly
and vigorous neighbor for some 1,800
miles.
In 1836 the state of Ohio and the ter-
ritory of Michigan nearly came to blows
about the dividing line between them and
in the proposed compromise Michigan re-
jected the upper peninsula as worthless,
but she afterwards accepted it. In 1840,
when on application of Michigan a bill
was before Congress for a land grant
to aid the building of a lock to overcome
the 19 foot drop in water level at Sault
Ste. Marie, Henry Clay said in a speech,
which defeated the particular bill, "it is
a work quite beyond the remotest settle-
ment of the United States, if not in the
moon."
It was in 1871, when application was
made for a land grant to aid a railroad
from the twin cities at the head of the
Mississippi, to the head of Lake Superior,
7o
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ESKIMO HUNTER, KING WIUJAMS LAND
that Proctor Knott ridiculed Duluth, the
future great and Zenith City of the un-
salted seas.
Last week, a steel freight steamer with
every modern convenience for economic
transportation, brought down from Du-
luth through the Sault canal and deliv-
ered at Buffalo the largest cargo of wheat
ever carried by any ship in the world,
422,000 bushels; enough to make 84,000
barrels of flour, and at 14 bushels to the
acre, representing the product of
30,000 acres, approximately 50
square miles ; and I have it from of-
ficial sources that we may take this
average. In 1907, in about 232 days
of navigation, Duluth shipped in the
single item of ore over 13,000,000
long tons, and her sister city across
the bay over 7,000,000 tons more.
One-third of all the tonnage under
the American flag is employed on
the Great Lakes. As an example of
the progress of transportation a
comparison may be illustrative. In
the last fiscal year, of ships of over
1,000 tons custom-house measure-
ment, there were built in other parts
of the United States, 18 steel and
wooden steamers, ferry boats and
schooners, with a tonnage of 41,355
tons. In the same period on the
lakes there were built 40 steel
steamers, each upward of 1,000
tons, and of aggregate custom-
house tonnage of 232,366 tons. It
may not be out of place to say that
more than 30 of these exceeded
5,000 tons custom-house measure-
ments. The custom-house meas-
urement, it must be borne in mind,
represents only something more
than one-half the actual dead weight
carrying capacity of our lake ships
at the draft which they can carry
through the shallower connecting
waters between the lakes themselves.
Therefore, it is that a steel steamer
of the prevailing type, say from 556
to over 600 feet length, 54 to 60 feet
beam and 32 feet depth carries 10,-
ooo, or more, long tons of iron ore
on a draft of a little over 18 feet to which
connecting waters consign her, and 12,-
ooo to 14,000 tons in such a trade as be-
tween Escanaba and the great steel works
at the head of Lake Michigan, in which
trade the steamer is not required to en-
counter the restricted draft compelled in
the connection betwen Lake Superior and
Lake Huron and Lake Erie, by reason of
natural conditions which I have not the
time to explain.
HONORS FOR AMUNDSEN
7l
Concurrently have come in-
ventions for the rapid handling of
cargo, so that one of these great
cargoes of iron ore or grain can
be, and some times is, loaded in
a couple of hours and unloaded
within five hours. Covering a
voyage between Lake Erie ports
and the head of Lake Superior
such a vessel makes a round trip
in from 7 to 12 days according as
she goes without cargo one way
or is loaded each way and sub-
ject to congestion at either ter-
minal.
Such has been the progress
and demand for transportation
that the railroads are so choked,
especially at their terminals, that
they are, and have been, exhaust-
ing every device that ingenuity,
involving concurrence of action
between railroads and shippers,
can suggest to prevent mileage
service of the average freight car
being reduced below the already
alarming point, said to be within
past ten years from 30 miles to
20 miles per day.
The Great Lakes system is fur-
nishing in its cheap water trans-
portation about one-third as much
ton-mile service in its eight months
season as the combined service of all the
railroads of the United States in the year.
The average ton-mile cost by our rail-
roads, which is, generally speaking, half
or less than the cost in Europe, runs over
8 mills. The favorably located and best
equipped may come down to one-half of
this but not lower unless we regard a very
few exceptional cases to which a general
rule could not be applied. The ton-mile
cost in the Great Lakes haul is about one-
tenth the average of the rail haul and say
one-fifth that of the most favored rail
routes with the exceptions stated.
While Henry Clay protested, strong,
helpful men of business forced a pass-
age between the east and the magnificent
northwest of the United States and Can-
ada which we see todav. The state of
ESKIMO AT KING WILLIAMS LAND
Michigan was induced to take upon her-
self the building of a lock at the Sault.
To accomplish the cherished idea it is
said that some of these men traveled 50
miles on snow-shoes through a winter
wilderness to attend a meeting, lest the
project fail or falter.
It did not fail because it was the des-
tiny of the great American and Canadian
Northwest to become the chief grainery
of the world. It was the destiny of the
United States to become the imperial
factor in iron and steel and in industrial
pursuits ; and the destiny of the United
States has never yet halted for lack of
human instruments.
So the Indian legend that Gargantua,
the great chief and demi-god, when he
found the waters of Lake Superior rising,
put on his great boots and walked around
72
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
the lake until he found at the Sault that
the great white beaver had built a dam,
and that he kicked away the dam and
opened up the intercourse between the
lower lakes and the great northwest is
not true. It was those sturdy men of
Michigan and the East who, foreseeing
the almost boundless possibilities of the
Northwest, broke the barrier with the
prosaic lock and canal which ever since
their grateful successors have improved
and enlarged till now through this gate-
way in the two-thirds of the year allotted
to our northern navigation there will
have passed in this season of 1907 almost,
if not quite, 60,000,000 tons of cargo—
nearly four times that through the Suez
and nearly six times the estimate for the
Panama in its tenth year of operation.
The actual saving in freight has in the
past single year exceeded all the cost of
all the improvements beginning with the
first lock in 1855 and throughout the en-
tire chain of lakes. No man, woman, or
child in this country but has felt and en-
joyed its beneficent influence and results,
while people in far-off lands have been
distinctly benefited.
From Lake Superior comes this year
more than 40,000,000 of iron ore so rich
in the metal that it will produce more
than 80 per cent, of the output of pig iron
for the year in this country, which in turn
will equal or exceed the combined output
of Great Britain, Germany, and France;
and the blessing to humanity, the good
hope, and. the good cheer of it all is that
all the output of all the countries will
be needed to meet the advancing require-
ments of the world. This marvelous de-
velopment, so in its infancy, is due defi-
nitely and directly to the five inland seas.
THE: TO AST MASTER
The next toast will be responded to by
Hon. J. Hampton Moore, who is a little
bit handicapped in name, but what he
knows about the water arteries on the
Atlantic Coast is not a gift. It was ac-
quired by long and patient study.
THE ARTERIES TO THE ATLANTIC. BY HON,
J. HAMPTON MOORE
In the boundaries of the fifteen states
along the Atlantic Seaboard the East re-
tains a population of thirty millions of
people.
We have started in the East along the
Atlantic coast what promises to be a
great campaign, hand in hand with our
brother of the middle and extreme West,
for the development of the waterways of
this country. We do not yet quite under-
stand their enormous extent. We have
passed beyond the important question of
forestry because we have very few forests
left. They have been denuded for the
purposes of the W^est, and we have not
yet quite come to understand the impor-
tance of developing the waterways in the
East as some of you have been developing
them in the West. But recently, by
reason of the congestion of freight traffic,
by reason of the incapacity of the rail-
roads of the country to carry the product
of the mechanics of the country and of
the manufacturers of. the country, not-
withstanding that they are pushing for-
ward with giant strides, and in my own
city of Philadelphia are turning out eight
and nine locomotives a day from one of
the great works alone ; notwithstanding
this great development in manufactures,
the hand of the artisan and of the laborer
and the mechanic, combined with the
energy and the capital of the manufac-
turer, is exceeding the carrying capacity
of the railroads and has brought us to
a realization of the importance of the
waterways as a means of carrying
freight, on competitive, or, if you please,
on relief lines. We have talked recently of
the development of an inland chain. It
is not altogether a new idea, but the
movement to work for it systematically
is of recent origin.
We believe that for the purposes of
commerce, as well as for the purposes of
war, it would be important not alone to
great manufacturing and industrial in-
terests, not alone for the purpose of car-
rying commodities of heavy, bulky
HONORS FOR AMUNDSEN
73
COAL FLOATED DOWN THE} OHIO RIVER TO CINCINNATI
It cost one-third of a mill per ton per mile. The illustration shows a part of a single fleet
of barges containing 60,000 tons of coal. Photo from Will L. Finch, Cincinnati
freight, but for the purpose of carrying
passengers too.
We should have an inland chain of
waterways complete from Boston, on the
north, to Beaufort, North Carolina, on
the south, a distance of something over a
thousand miles, with opportunities to go
inland at least 150 miles ; these waterways
to be serviceable for canal barges, for
ships of commerce, and, if you please,
for ships of war. We have been think-
ing, as this question has arisen, of the iso-
lated long seaboard, of the property im-
periled, and the lives lost ; we have been
thinking, too, of those silent vigils of the
day and night who constitute the life
guard of this country, and who patrol
every foot of the Atlantic seaboard, and
of our other seaboards while we are snug
at home through the wintry season. On
the shores of Cape Cod alone, as statis-
tics recently handed to me show, there
were, during a period of twenty years fol-
lowing 1 88 1, as many as one thousand
wrecks of vessels carrying precious car-
goes of human beings and of freight.
The development of inland waterways
gives courage against the dangers of the
Capes, of the shoals of Barnegat, and of
the terrors of Cape Hatteras, now almost
a graveyard of the seamen of the cen-
turies.
We are hoping the happy time will
come when the North and the South will
be united upon the proposition to make
available for commerce and to make
available, if necessary, for purposes of
war, though there will be no war with
foreign powers while we are represented
bv foreign ambassadors such as sit about
74
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
this board tonight — in fact, to make it
available for any emergency. The con-
struction of this great inland waterway,
we believe, will be productive not alone
of increased manufactures, but will afford
an opportunity to the cotton planter of
the South to send his goods north at a
cheaper and better rate of freight, and
will open up the farm lands that have
barely been considered in the general
waterway agitation up to this time.
If you will take your maps when you
return to your homes and draw your
finger down the line from Boston to
Beaufort, you will see a water-course a
thousand miles long, through which you
could pass in a small boat from the
southern side of Cape Cod, but through
which no large boat could pass uninter-
ruptedly, because there is not sufficient
depth to make it available for purposes of
commerce. There are several strips of
land in the way. Cape Cod itself has not
been cut through. But one canal is now
being cut through by the government of
the state^of Massachusetts, and another
is on the* plans for construction. There
would be a saving of seventy miles
around the perilous shoals of Cape Cod.
Following the course down Long Island
Sound you would come from the harbor
of New York through the Raritan Canal,
a distance of 34 miles, across New Jer-
sey to the Delaware River. That canal is
entirely too shallow for commerce or
war. It should be made deeper and
broader to meet the necessities of the on-
coming generations. Pass on down the
Delaware to the city of Philadelphia.
Pass Trenton and Wilmington and come
to the state of Delaware, and there you
strike the Chesapeake and Delaware
Canal. Only thirteen miles of open
water-course would carry any vessel not
exceeding 9 feet in draft, out into the
Chesapeake Bay, and on down the Ches-
a peake Bay to Norfolk, and then through
the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds out
through the sand dunes of North Caro-
lina again into the Atlantic Ocean. You
speak of those things that are attractive
to you in your geographic studies, those
things that are pleasant to you in your
scientific research ; think of this as a
problem of the future; think of this as
something that will help to develop this
country and unite the sections in bonds
of commercial and industrial intercourse ;
in those bonds which make for the peace
and prosperity of the land.
MEMBERS AND GUESTS PRESENT
Mr C. E. Adams.
Mrs Harriet Chalmers Adams.
Capt. Roald Amundsen.
Senator and Mrs Ankeny, of Washington.
Hon. O. P. Austin.
Miss Austin.
Miss Bagley.
Mr Reid S. Baker.
Mr and Mrs W. H. Baldwin.
Miss Baldwin.
Mr and Mrs O. W. Barrett.
Representative Bartholdt, of Missouri.
Mrs E. J. Bates.
Dr and Mrs L. A. Bauer.
Mr George Herbert Beaman.
Mr and Mrs Charles J. Bell.
Mr Sydney Bieber.
Mr F. C. Billard.
Mr Frederic de Billiets.
General John S. Black, President Civil Service
Commission.
Mr and Mrs John S. Blair.
Dr Wm R. Blair.
Col. and Mrs Henry F. Blount.
Mr and Mrs Scott C. Bone.
Mrs Linnie M. Bourne.
Mr Randolph Bourne.
Representative and Mrs Boutell, of Illinois.
Representative and Mrs Sidney J. Bowie, of
Alabama.
Mr. C. S. Bradley.
Mr J. A. Breckons.
Mr Robert Brott.
Miss Anna B. D. Brown.
Mr William Wallace Brown.
Mrs. Brown.
Hon. C. Brim, The Danish Minister.
Dr Joseph H. Bryan.
Hon. James Bryce, The British Ambassador.
Mrs Bryce.
Captain Buckle, British Royal Artillery.
Mrs Buckle.
Rev. Dr S. J. Buel, President of Georgetown
University.
Representative and Mrs A. S. Burleson, of
Texas.
Representative H. R. Burton, of Delaware.
Representative Theodore Burton, of Ohio.
Hon. Y. Calderon, Bolivian Minister.
Madame Calderon.
Mr Frank G. Carpenter.
HONORS FOR AMUNDSEN
75
Mrs Carpenter.
Col. Thos. L. Casey, U. S. Army.
Mrs Casey.
Mr W. L. Chamberlin.
Mr and Mrs Robert Hollister Chapman.
Mr and Mrs Melville Church.
Miss Catherine E. Cook.
Mr and Mrs F. V. Coville.
Col. and Mrs Medorem Crawford.
Hon. E. C. Creel, The Mexican Ambassador.
Madame Creel.
Mr H. McC. Crist.
Mr and Mrs Sumner Curtis.
Hon. Josephus Daniels.
Mr and Mrs O. E. Darnall.
Mr William A. De Caindry.
Mr and Mrs. H. F. Dodge.
Miss Doyle.
Mrs Arthur W. Dunn.
Mr and Mrs John Joy Edson.
Mr Edwin Ehret.
Mr and Mrs F. B. Eichelberger.
Mr Fred A. Emery.
Miss Emery.
Hon. Charles W. Fairbanks, The Vice-Presi-
dent.
Mr and Mrs David Fairchild.
Mr and Mrs R. L. Fearn.
Representative H. D. Flood, of Virginia.
Mr E. W. Foster.
Hon. John W. Foster, formerly Secretary of
State.
Mr H. K. Fulton.
Prof, and Mrs B. T. Galloway.
Senator Gamble, of South Dakota.
Mr and Mrs. Henry Goldmark.
Col. Green Clay Goodloe.
Mr and Mrs Gilbert H. Grosvenor.
Mr and Mrs Harvey D. Goulder, of Cleveland.
Judge A. B. Hagner.
Dr Arnold Hague.
Dr Albert Hale.
Count Hanihara, of the Japanese Embassy.
Miss Gena Russell Harding.
Representative and Mrs Kittredge Haskins, of
Vermont.
Mr Phelan E. Haron.
Miss C. L. Harrold.
Mr A. G. Heaton.
Hon. Hilary A. Herbert, formerly Secretary of
the Navy.
Mr W. H. Hesse.
Hon. David Jayne Hill, American Ambassador
to Germany.
Mr Joseph A. Hill.
Mr and Mrs Frank J. Hogan.
Mr E. F. Holbrook.
Mr W. R. Hollister.
Senator and Mrs A. J. Hopkins, of Illinois.
Prof. W. J. Humphreys.
Mr Frank Huntington.
Mr George W. Hutchison.
Miss Jessie E. Hutchison.
Mr and Mrs Thos. B. Hutchinson.
Miss Emma James.
Prof. J. Franklin Jameson.
Mr and Mrs Hennen Jennings.
Mr and Mrs Sidney Jennings.
Mr Alba B. Johnson, President Geographical
Society of Philadelphia.
Mrs Johnson.
Mr George H. Judd.
Hon. J. J. Jusserand, The French Ambassador.
Madame Jusserand.
Mr Cyrus Kehr.
Mr and Mrs Chas. E. Kern.
Miss Alice Kern.
Mr and Mrs Geo. A. King.
Mr John Oliver La Gorce.
Mr J. C. Lake.
Representative John Lamb, of Virginia.
Miss Lamb.
Mr and Mrs John B. Lamer.
Abram Lisner.
Representative Littlefield, of Maine.
Senator Long, of Kansas.
Dr and Mrs Theodore Le Boutillier, of Phila-
delphia.
Mr Israel Ludlow.
Mr Otto Luebkert.
Mr Nicholas Luquer.
Representative S. W. McCall, of Massachusetts.
Mr H. D. McCaskey.
Mr F. R. McCoy.
Mr Arthur W. McCurdy.
Dr W J McGee.
Representative W. B. McKinley, of Illinois.
Mr and Mrs Geo. X. McLanahan.
Mr Alex. McNeil.
Mr John Holmes Magruder.
Mr and Mrs Fred E. Mann.
Representative and Mrs James R. Mann, of
Illinois.
Miss Manning.
Mr M. Henri Martin.
Miss Mattis.
Mr Harold May.
Baron Mayor des Planches, The Italian Am-
bassador.
Baroness des Planches.
Mr and Mrs J. Walter Mitchell.
T. B. Moenniche.
Mr David Molitor.
Baron Moncheur, Belgian Minister.
Baroness Moncheur.
Representative and Mrs J. Hampton Moore, of
Pennsylvania.
President and Mrs Willis L. Moore.
Prof. Simon Newcomb.
Mr Crosby S. Noyes.
Mr and Mrs Theodore Noyes.
Mr Isaac P. Noyes.
Monsignor D. J. O'Connell, President Catholic
University of America.
Commander and Mrs Robert E. Peary.
Mr James H. Penniman.
Mr J. W. Pilling.
Mr James W. Pinchot.
76
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Hon. Epifanis de Portela, The Argentine
Minister.
Madame de Portela.
Mr Raymond W. Pullman.
Mr George R. Putnam.
Mr Blanchard Randall.
Miss Janet Richards.
Mr F. A. Richardson.
Mr and Mrs George Robinson.
Miss Rodgers.
Capt. and Mrs Worthington G. Ross.
Mr Cuno Rudolph.
Mr Edward T. Sanford.
Mr and Mrs Marvin E. Scaife.
Miss Eliza R. Scidmore.
Representative Charles F. Scott, of Kansas.
Mr John S. Scully.
Miss M. Isobel Sedgley.
Miss Nellie Sedgley.
Mr and Mrs Edgar D. Shaw.
Mr C. von Schubert, of the German Embassy.
Mr Theo. F. Shuey.
Senator and Mrs F. M. Simmons, of North
Carolina.
Hon. O. Skybak, Norwegian Charge d' Affaires.
Mr W. A. Slater.
Mr Brockholst M. Smith.
Rev. Dr and Mrs C. Ernest Smith.
Mr and Mrs F. Carl Smith.
Dr George Otis Smith, Director U. S. Geo-
logical Survey.
Mr and Mrs Odell S. Smith.
Senator and Mrs Smoot, of Utah.
Mr and Mrs Edgar C. Snyder.
Major George O. Squier, U. S. Army.
Mr and Mrs H. Steenerson.
Dr Geo. M. Sternberg, formerly Surgeon Gen-
eral U. S. Navy.
Hon. Charles A. Stillings, Public Printer.
Dr and Mrs Chas. G. Stone.
Miss Mary Suermondt.
Mr John Sutcliffe.
Senator and Mrs George Sutherland, of
Utah.
Mr Frank Sutton.
Miss Florence M. Taylor.
Mr Henry W. Taylor.
Miss Mary E. Taylor.
Mr John Adams Thayer.
Mr W. B. Thompson.
Mr Theodore H. Tiller.
Hon. O. H. Tittmann, Superintendent U. S.
Coast and Geodetic Survey.
Hon. Leo Vogel, The Swiss Minister.
Mr and Mrs F. B. Vrooman.
Mr and Mrs Ernest G. Walker.
Mr and Mrs M. I. Weller.
Mr Walter Wellman.
Mr C. T. Werntag.
Mr and Mrs Max Weyl.
Mr Odell L. Whipple.
Mr and Mrs. Wm. Perrine Van Wickle.
Mr Walter D. Wilcox.
Mr H. E. Williams.
Miss Antoinette E. Willner.
Miss Allison Wilson.
Mr and Mrs Jesse E. Wilson.
Mr and Mrs. J. F. Wilson.
Col. and Mrs A. S. Worthington.
Miss Hallie L. Wright.
THE RECESSION OF THE GLACIERS OF
GLACIER BAY, ALASKA
BY FREMONT MORSE, U. S. COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY
ONE of the most interesting points
brought out in our past season's
work in Glacier Bay is the re-
markable retreat of the glaciers discharg-
ing into that body of water. The sur-
veys made by the Canadian parties in
1894 located the fronts of the glaciers at
that time and give us data for an accurate
determination of the amount of the re-
cession, when taken in connection with
our work this year ( 1907) .
The primary cause of the changes
which have taken place can without
doubt be traced to the great Yakutat
earthquake of September, 1899. At that
time an earthquake occurred which was
apparently central in Disenchantment
Bay, or the upper end of Yakutat Bay,
and which upheaved the rocks in that
vicinity, by actual measurement, some 30
or 40 feet. In one place it was measured
and found to be 47 feet. This great dis-
turbance of the earth's crust profoundly
affected the glaciers in Glacier Bay.
Previous to that time for many years the
excursion steamers of the Pacific Coast
* From a report to Hon. O. H. Titt mann, U. S. Boundary Commissioner.
THE RECESSION OF THE GLACIERS OF GLACIER BAY 77
Steamship Company had regularly run
up into the bay, and had experienced
little or no difficulty in approaching
within a few hundred yards, or as close
as it was deemed safe, to the face of the
Muir glacier. The earthquake changed
all that. The glaciers seem to have been
completely shattered by the shock. Vast
masses of ice were discharged, which so
choked the bay that it was impossible for
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
steamers to enter. So also the breaking
up of the ice masses seems to have been
so thorough that great quantities have
continued to be discharged every year
since then, and it was not until this sum-
mer that the excursion boats were able
to approach to within less than from 10
to 20 miles of the front of the Muir. The
steamer Spokane, commanded by the
veteran Capt. James Carroll, succeeded in
fetting up to within about a mile of the
ice of that glacier on one of her trips
this year.
Formerly the Muir presented a per-
pendicular front at least 200 feet in
height, from which huge bergs were de-
tached at frequent intervals. The sight
and sound of one of these vast masses
falling from the cliff, or suddenly ap-
pearing from the submarine ice-foot, was
something which once witnessed was not
to be forgotten. It was grand and im-
pressive beyond description.
Unfortunately the recent changes in
the Muir have not increased its impres-
siveness from a scenic standpoint. In-
stead of the imposing cliff of ice, the
front is sloping, and seems to be far less
active than formerly. Its shape is en-
tirely changed. It is now divided into
two branches, the two branches being
caused by what were formerly two
"nunataks" in the body of the glacier.
The eastern arm discharges but little, and
appears to be nearly dead. The front of
the western arm is in shape of an elon-
gated basin, and, as above stated, slopes
gently. It is badly crevassed ; a point of
rock juts out at the water's edge on the
west side of the basin. This is apparently
the prolongation of a ridge which out-
crops through the ice-field further back,
and which will soon, if the glacier con-
tinues to retreat at its present rate, make
two arms of the present western one. It
is from this western arm that the bulk
of the ice is now discharged.
That the changes now going on will
continue in the same direction is by no
means certain. All around Glacier Bay
from Bartlett Bay up into Hugh Miller
Inlet, and including the Muir Inlet, there
are evidences that there was once before
a retreat of the glaciers followed by an
advance. Stumps of large trees, in situ,
along the shore line, testify unmistakably
that for a long period the country was
free from ice, that forests grew, that the
ice advanced and overwhelmed them, and
has again retreated. Who can predict
what will come next?
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY
Friday, January 31, 1908 — "The Conserva-
tion of Our Natural Resources." Mr Gifford
Pinchot, Chief of the U. S. Forest Service.
Friday, February 7, 1908 — "South Africa :
The Natives and the Mines." Mr Gardiner F.
Williams, author of "The Diamond Mines of
South Africa" and for many years General
Manager of the De Beers Diamond Mines,
Kimberley. Illustrated.
Friday, February 14, 1908 — "The Deep-water
Route from Chicago to the Gulf and its Con-
nections." Hon. Joseph E. Ransdell, Member
of Congress from Louisiana and President of
the Rivers and Harbors Congress.
Friday, February 21, 1908 — Hon. George
Shiras, 3rd, of Pittsburg, has accepted the in-
vitation of the National Geographic Society to
address the Society on some of his experiences
in hunting wild game with the camera. Illus-
trated.
Friday, February 28, 1908 — "Holland's War
with the Sea." Prof. J. Howard Gore. Illus-
trated.
Friday, March 6, 1908 — "The Missions of
California." Hon. Joseph R. Knowland, Mem-
ber of Congress from California.
Friday, March 13, 1908 — "Arizona — The
Egypt of the New World." Mr Frederick
Monsen. Mr Monsen describes not only the
ancient ruins, but the country as it is today,
with its Indian tribes, Spanish-Mexican settle-
ments, and American towns. The wonderful
Snake Dance of the Hopis will be shown.
Friday, March 20, 1908 — "Persia — Past and
Present." Dr A. V. Williams-Jackson, of Co-
lumbia University. Illustrated with unusual
pictures taken by Professor Jackson on exten-
sive journeys through the ancient kingdom.
Friday, March 27, 1908 — "The Geography of
the Sea." Rear Admiral Colby M. Chester,
U. S. Navy.
Friday, April 3, 1908 — "Cathedrals, Mosques,
and Temples of the World." Hon. O. P.
Austin, Chief U. S. Bureau of Statistics. Il-
lustrated.
VOL. XIX, No. 2
WASHINGTON
FEBRUARY, 1908
THE POLICEMEN OF THE AIR
An Account of the Biological Survey of the Department
of Agriculture
BY HENRY WETHERBEE HENSHAW
THE pursuit of science solely for
its own sake, however commend-
able it may be, is not the spirit
that animates our government in its
support of scientific research. In its aims
and ambitions this is a practical age.
Thousands of men are experimenting, in-
venting, and prying into the secrets of
nature for the avowed purpose of utiliz-
ing their discoveries for the practical
benefit of mankind. Applied science has
come to occupy a very important place in
our government institutions, and in none
is it more important than in the Depart-
ment of Agriculture.
From small beginnings, the department
in little less than half a century has ex-
panded in every direction, and in the last
decade, under the able management of
Secretary Wilson, has grown to huge pro-
portions. Its work is divided among
numerous bureaus, each with a distinct
line of research, and a small army of as-
sistants is employed, many of whom are
engaged in various fields of scientific in-
vestigation for the benefit of the Ameri-
can farmer.
It is the work of one of its bureaus, the
Biological Survey, that concerns us here.
The Survey had its beginning in 1885,
when its present head, Doctor C. Hart
Merriam, with one assistant, began to in-
vestigate the economic relations of birds
to agriculture. The scope of the field was
soon enlarged to include the kindred sub-
ject of economic mammalogy. In addi-
tion to these important subjects, its duties
now include the study of the geographic
distribution of animals and plants with
special reference to the determination of
life and crop zones, and the supervision
of matters relating to game protection
and the importation of foreign birds and
animals.
I
RELATION OF BIRDS TO AGRICULTURE
When the Survey began its work very
few accurate observations on the food of
birds had been recorded. Most of the
published information bearing on the sub-
ject rested on field observation only, and,
besides the liability to error from faulty
or insufficient observations, the data
gathered in this way were entirely inade-
quate. It is not enough to be told that
birds feed on insects ; we must know the
particular kinds they eat. The fact that
the crow sometimes eats corn is not suffi-
cient evidence upon which to condemn
8o
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
From the Biological Survey
FOUR COMMON SEED-BATING BIRDS
i, Junco ; 2, White-throated Sparrow ; 3, Fox Sparrow ; 4, Tree Sparrow
THE POLICEMEN OF THE AIR
8
the bird. We must learn the
nature of its food at all times of
year, and then strike a fair bal-
ance between its good and its bad
deeds; hence the absolute neces-
sity for the examination of the
contents of birds' stomachs, by
which means may be accurately
determined not only the kinds of
food eaten but their relative
quantities. This method is ex-
ceedingly slow and laborious, re-
quqires a high order of expert
ability, and moreover is open to
the very serious objection that
it necessitates the taking of use-
ful lives. So far as possible,
the latter objection has been min-
imized by utilizing the stomachs
of birds killed by naturalists for
scientific purposes. This mate-
rial, which otherwise would be
lost to economic science, renders
it unnecessary, except in special
cases to destroy birds for the
purpose of food examinations.
In the above connection it
must not be forgotten that when
a thorough examination of the
food of a given species is once
made and the results published,
the work is done for all time. The food
habits of a species having been once de-
termined by this method, no possible exr
cuse exists, so far as food investigations
go, for further destruction of bird life ;
and the more so because the contents of
all stomachs examined are preserved as
vouchers for further verification, should
that be deemed necessary.
Passing to a consideration of some of
the practical problems presented, it might
seem that the relation of birds to agricul-
ture were simple, since the question is
chiefly one of food. Do birds destroy
crops? then of course they are injurious.
Do they eat insects? then of a certainty
they must be beneficial. But the problems
are not to be settled in this ofT-hand fash-
ion. In reality they are extremely com-
plex and are to be understood only after
much painstaking study. It has been
From the Biolqgical Survey
SPARROW HAWK
Which helps the farmer by eating grasshoppers, crickets,
and beetles (see page 85)
found, for instance, that a bird may be in-
jurious at one time and not another. In
one region it may be a pest and in another
an unmixed blessing. Some birds — un-
fortunately not many — are always bene-
ficial. Others — fortunately not many —
are always and everywhere injurious.
But the great bulk of birds are both harm-
ful and beneficial by turns, according to
age, season of the year, the presence or
absence of their natural food, and a va-
riety of circumstances.
THE: TREK SPARROWS VERY BENEFICIAL
For present purposes we may roughly
group the bulk of our small birds into two
classes — seed-eaters and insect-eaters.
The seed-eaters, mostly of the sparrow
family, have stout bodies and strong coni-
cal bills, expressly designed for crushing
seeds. Their name is legion and the
82
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
From the Biological Survey
A USEFUL BIRD OF PREY
Swainson hawk. This bird saves the western farmer
$100,000 a year (see page 85)
family contains more species than any
other group of birds. It is well that this is
so, for the destruction of weed seed is of
tremendous importance to the farmer,
whose trouble to keep ahead of the weeds,
great as it is now, would be vastly in-
creased were it not for the soberly clad
and unobstrusive little sparrows. We
may get an idea of the value of the serv-
ice these birds render by noting what is
done for the farmer by the tree-sparrow,
one of the most confirmed seed-eaters of
the group. A quarter of an ounce of
seed per day is a safe estimate of the food
of an adult tree-sparrow. On this reckon-
ing, in a state like Iowa, where agricul-
ture is relatively very important, tree-
sparrows annually eat about 875 tons of
weed seed :
The total value of the principal field
crops of the United States for the year
1906 was about $3,500,000,000. If we
estimate that the combined consumption
of weed seed by the sparrow
family results in an annual saving
of only i per cent of the value of
the crops, the sum total saved to
the farmer in 1906 was $35,-
000,000.
Though seeds form the chief
part of the subsistence of spar-
rows, the destruction of seeds is
by no means all we have to thank
these birds for. They eat many
insects also, and seem to know
instinctively that while seeds are
excellent food for adult birds,
they are not necessarily good for
nestlings, and hence feed the lat-
ter almost exclusively on insects.
Sparrows, however, are not the
only birds that consume the seeds
of weeds. The eastern quail or
bobwhite is a confirmed eater of
weed seeds. Highly exteemed as
bobwhite is by the epicure for
food and by the sportsman as an
object of pursuit, he is probably
worth so much more as a weed-
destroyer that the farmer can ill
afford to have him shot, even
though the privilege is roundly
paid for. A bevy or two of quail
on a farm is an asset the value of
which no thrifty farmer should
overlook. Doves also are seed
eaters, especially the turtle-dove, whose
crop often is so packed with the seeds of
weeds that it can hold no more.
The farmer has no quarrel with birds
that confine their attention to grass and
weed seeds, and welcomes their presence
always and everywhere. There are birds,
however, which eat such seeds as corn,
wheat, and barley, and whose place in the
farmer's esteem is by no means so well
assured — the crow and the blackbirds for
instance. There are several kinds of
blackbirds which at times attack crops as
also does the crow. The destruction by
the crow of meadow mice, and of cut-
worms and other insect pests and the de-
struction of many kinds of insects by the
blackbirds, however, are considered in
most localities to offset all damage done
in other ways and even to leave a balance
in favor of the birds.
THE POLICEMEN OF THE AIR
From the Biological Survey
CACTUS WREN
A common desert bird of the southwestern United States
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
From the Biological Survey
GOLDEN
The most widely distributed of the eagles. It ranges over most of North America and a
large part of the old world. In sections of California the Golden Eagle feeds on ground
squirrels and is wholly beneficial, while in some other parts of its range it feeds on lambs and
wild game and is a noxious species.
THE POLICEMEN OF THE AIR
BIRDS THAT EAT INSECTS
Many birds, as flycatchers,
warblers, swallows, and chimney-
swifts, live exclusively, or almost
so, on insects, and very many
more, as blackbirds, orioles, and
some hawks, depend on them for
a considerable part of their liveli-
hood. The little sparrow-hawk
lives very largely upon grasshop-
pers, crickets, and beetles, and
even one of the larger hawks —
the Swainson hawk of the west-
ern plains — at certain seasons de-
stroys enough of these injurious
insects, together with small ro-
dents, to save the western farmer
upwards of a hundred thousand
dollars a year.
If all insects preyed upon vege-
tation, our inquiry into the value
of insect-eating birds need go no
further, since all of them might
be set down as beneficial ; but by
no means all insects are destruc-
tive of vegetation, and their relations to
each other and to birds are very complex
and puzzling. The insects that feed on
vegetation at some stage or other of their
existence probably outnumber all others,
both in number of species and of indi-
viduals ; but there are two other classes
of insects which deserve attention here,
the predaceous and the parasitic. The
predaceous insects, either in the adult or
larval state, feed upon other insects and
hence in the main are beneficial. It
would seem, therefore, that in so
far as birds destroy predaceous insects
they do harm. That birds do destroy
a greater or less number cannot be
denied, but as many species of this
group secrete nauseous fluids, which
serve, in a measure at least, to protect
them, and as many are of retiring habits
and not readily found, the number de-
stroyed by birds is relatively not large.
Moreover, some of the predaceous in-
sects, when insect food is not available,
become vegetarians, and hence assume
the role of enemies of the farmer ; so that
when birds destroy predaceous insects
From the Biological Survey
A BARRED
they may be doing the farmer either a
good turn or an ill turn, according to cir-
cumstances.
The relation of birds to the so-called
parasitic insects is still more intricate and
puzzling. Parasitic insects fill a very im-
portant place in the economy of nature;
it is even claimed by entomologists that
they do more effective service in aiding
to keep true the balance in the insect
world than any other agency. They at-
tack insects in every stage of existence
and insure their destruction by depositing
eggs on, or in, the bodies of adults, their
larvae (the worm or caterpillar stage),
their pupae, or their eggs. Now, birds
recognize no fine distinctions in the insect
world. All is grist that comes to the
avian mill, and parasitic insects are
snapped up by birds without the slightest
regard to the fact that they are useful to
man. Hence we have a complicated
problem to unravel in respect to the inter-
relation of insect pests, of insect parasites
that destroy them, and of birds that de-
stroy both pests and their parasites. As
Swift phrases it :
86
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photo from the Biological Survey
A MONUMENT TO THE INDUSTRY OF BARN OWLS
Field Mouse skulls found under owl roost in Smithsonian tower, Washington (see page 87)
So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.
After due recognition of the part in-
sect parasites play in the economy of
nature, it is evident that, unassisted, they
are unequal to the task of keeping insect
life in a proper state of equilibrium. In
this work birds play an important, though
it may be relatively a somewhat sub-
ordinate part. Had parasitic and pre-
daceous insects been equal to the task of
holding in check insect pests, there would
be no place in the world for insect-eating
birds. In the progress of evolution, how-
ever, long after insects and insect para-
sites appeared, birds found a place va-
cant, which even their reptilian ancestors
had not been able to occupy, and pro-
ceeded to fill it. Having once gained a
place in the world, birds entered into a
competitive struggle with each other and
with other insect-eaters. In the course of
time they developed into a great number
of families, each distinguished by pecul-
iarities of form, plumage, and habits, and
each endowed with methods of its own in
the pursuit of food. That so many birds
are insect-eaters is an index alike of the
enormous reproductive capacity of insects
and the inadequacy of the forces that
warred on insects before the advent of
birds.
HAWKS AND OWLS ARE} NOT MARAUDERS
BUT MOST BENEFICIAL
The popular idea regarding hawks and
owls is that they are nothing but robbers
and bold marauders. Their real charac-
ter and the nature of their services to
man are generally overlooked. The fact
is that the great majority of our hawks
and owls are beneficial, and spend the
greater part of their lives in killing small
rodents, most of which are always and
everywhere noxious. Hawks and owls
are long-lived birds, as birds go, and this
fact gives a hint of their importance in
the eyes of nature and of their value as
servants of man.
The work of hawks and owls is com-
plementary. All hawks are diurnal, and
hunt their prey between the hours of day-
light and dark. Owls, on the contrary,
are chiefly nocturnal, but do much of
their hunting in the early evening and
morning hours, or by moonlight, and
when pressed by hunger or when feeding
young, they sometimes hunt by day.
Hence, between them, hawks and owls
THE POLICEMEN OF THE AIR
Photo from the Biological Survey
THROWN UP BY OWLS, CONTAINING BONES AND HAIR OF MICE, NATURAL SIZE
are on duty throughout the 24 hours, and
thus are enabled to prey on all kinds of
rodents, large and small, those which are
abroad by night as well as those active by
day.
The bulk of the depredations on birds
and chickens due to hawks is committed
by three species — the Cooper and sharp-
shinned hawks and the goshawk ; and the
sportsman and farmer's boy should learn
to know these daring robbers by sight, so
as to kill them whenever possible. The
so-called "hen-hawks," usually either the
red-shouldered or red-tail hawk, are too
often made victims of a bad name; for
while both species occasionally snatch a
chicken, the habit is far too uncommon to
justify the name "hen-hawk." The good
these two big hawks do in the long run
by destroying rats and mice far more
than compensates the farmer for the in-
significant damage he suffers at their
talons.
CURIOUS METHODS OF DIGESTION
Both hawks and owls often swallow
their prey entire or in large fragments,,
together with the bones, hair, and even
some of the feathers. Avian digestion is
both good and rapid, but it is unequal to-
the task of assimilating such substances,
and accordingly both hawks and owls
throw up these rejecta in the form of
neatly rolled pellets. In studying the
food habits of birds of prey much use is
made of these pellets, and the vicinity of
a nest of a pair of horned owls, for in-
stance, often contains an unmistakable
record of the birds' food, and perhaps
that of the young, for months or even
years.
From the foregoing it will at once ap-
pear that the practice of offering bounties
indiscriminately for the heads of hawks
and owls, as has been done by some
states, is a mistake, and results not only
88
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
in the wasting of public funds, but in the
destruction of valuable lives, which can
be replaced, if at all, only with great diffi-
culty and after the lapse of a term of
years. In no one particular does the
public, especially the sportsman and
farmer, need to be educated more than in
the value of hawks. The temptation to
shoot a hawk or owl, perching or flying,
is well nigh irresistible, and the bad
habit is having the natural result of so
reducing the numbers of these birds as
to make it impossible for the survivors to
do the work nature intended them to do.
The notable increase of noxious rodents
in the last decade in certain parts of the
United States and the resulting damage
to crops without doubt are due in no
small part to the destruction of their
natural enemies, chief of which are the
birds of prey.
When the public is fully informed as to
the value of hawks and owls and an en-
From the Biological Survey
THREE-TOED WOODPECKER
A conservator of the northern forests
lightened sentiment is exerted in their
behalf, they will increase in numbers and
the damage to crops from noxious mam-
mals will correspondingly diminish.
THE POUCEMEN OF THE AIR
Differing widely as they do in struc-
ture and habits, birds collectively are able
in man's interests to police earth, air, and
water. The thrushes and other ground
feeders scour the surface of the
earth and hunt under leaves for hid-
den insects. The warblers, titmice, nut-
hatches, creepers, and others search
among the foliage and in the crevices of
bark for all manner of creeping things.
The woodpeckers, a highly specialized
group, perform a service no other birds
are equal to, since with their specially
designed chisels they dig into wood and
drag forth the hidden larvae that prey on
our forest monarchs. The flycatchers
from their perches dash out for
their prey as it flies from bush to
bush or tree to tree, while the
swallows and swifts skim the air,
and with intricate evolutions snap
up such insects as have escaped
the active search of their breth-
ren nearer earth. The waters too
and their shores have their
feathered denizens which exact
special tribute of the insect
world.
So that, quite aside from ques-
tions of sentiment, birds must be
adjudged to play an active and
important part in keeping na-
ture's balance true. Their role is
all the more important, since no
Dther creatures are fitted for their
special duties. Moreover, if we
may judge the future by the past,
the services of birds must become
increasingly valuable as time
goes on. Agriculture, always im-
portant in the United States, is
constantly assuming greater im-
portance. The stream of immi-
gration from the Old World and
the steady increase of our own
millions mean an ever-augment-
ing consumption of food at home,
while the demand from abroad
THE POLICEMEN OF THE AIR
for American foodstuffs never
ceases for a moment. To sup-
ply this triple demand, better
methods of tillage must be de-
vised and more and more acre-
age must be devoted to agri-
culture. In part this need of
creased acreage is to be met by
irrigation projects, which
when they materialize will
make available for farms and
homes millions of acres of
sterile desert.
WITHOUT BIRDS SUCCESSFUL
AGRICULTURE WOULD BE IM-
POSSIBLE.
But increased acreage and
larger crops mean a vast in-
crease of insect life as the re-
sult of a more constant and
abundant supply of food.
Even now, despite the inces-
sant warfare waged against
them, insects are not diminish-
ing in numbers. On the con-
trary, in many localities they
are increasing. Especially are
new pests finding their way
into the country, and as these usually
are unaccompanied by the enemies
which keep them in check at home,
they frequently run riot in the new-
these usually are unaccompanied by the
enemies which keep them in check at
home, they frequently run riot in the new-
found Paradise. Well-known instances
are the cotton boll weevil and the gypsy
and brown-tailed moths. It is estimated
by entomologists that the annual loss of
agricultural products from insect ravages
in the United States is not less than
$500,000,000. To birds, then, we must
look for allies in the continuous warfare
against insect pests, and if they are to
play even the same relative part in the
future as they have in the past, they
should not only be protected, but de-
termined efforts should be made to in-
crease their numbers and make their
work more effective.
What would happen were birds ex-
terminated no one can foretell with abso-
From the Biological Survey
CLARK CROW
A bird of the high pine forests in the Rocky mountains
lute certainty, but it is more than likely-
nay, it is almost certain — that within a
limited time not only would successful
agriculture become impossible, but the de-
struction of the greater part of vegeta-
tion would follow. It is believed that a
permanent reduction in the numbers of
our birds, even if no species are actually
exterminated, will inevitably be followed
by disastrous consequences.
The strict enforcement of bird-protec-
tion laws is the more important, since of
recent years thousands of immigrants
from the south of Europe have reached
our shores who appear to be wholly
ignorant of the value of birds to man ex-
cept for food, and who exhibit a total dis-
regard for the spirit of bird laws, and
little for the letter, except in so far as in-
fraction brings sure and swift punish-
ment. In the eyes of -many of these re-
cent comers, no bird is too small to serve
as food ; no bird too valuable to serve as
a mark for the gun. Birds' songs have
9°
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
THE POLICEMEN OF THE AIR
91
no purpose in their ears but to indicate
the whereabouts of their victims. Hunt-
ing small birds with them is a passion.
Unless speedy cognizance is taken of the
tendencies of this rapidly increasing class
of immigrants, some of our most valua-
ble song and insect-eating birds will be
in clanger of extermination.
It should arouse a feeling of pride in
Americans that our Republic has taken a
foremost place among the nations that
care for and protect birds. Much has
already been accomplished in this country
in the cause of bird protection, but much
still remains to be done. So long as
dead birds for hat gear are valued at a
higher rate than living birds, and so
long as game birds count for more in the
way of sport and food than as active
working friends of the farmer, so long
will there be missionary work to do for
such organizations as the Biological
Survey and Andubon Societies.
MANY OF THE: SMALL MAMMALS BECOME)
PESTS
The relations of mammals to agricult-
ure are very different from those of
birds. Most birds, as has been shown, are
beneficial, even those with injurious hab-
its, as a rule, compensating in whole or in
part for the damage they do. Such is
by no means the case with mammals. As
a result of the investigations of the
Biological Survey, some of our common
mammals indeed have been found to
perform valuable service to man. To
this class belong the bats, moles, and
shrews, which are insectivorous ; the bad-
ger, which is an indefatigable mouser
when it cannot find larger game in the
shape of prairie dogs and similar rodents ;
and the skunks and weasels, which de-
stroy vast numbers of insects as well as
mice. The fox, wild-cat, ring-tailed
civet, and opossum also are believed to be
useful in the main, as they eat many in-
sects and small rodents and by no means
destroy as much game as is popularly
supposed. Reynard's raids on the poultry
yard are not common, and they are so
easily guarded against that they should
count but little in the scale against him.
Even coyotes when they follow their
natural bent perform an important ser-
vice— they keep down the number of
rabbits, which constitute their natural
prey. Unfortunately, however, the coy-
ote early contracted a taste for mutton,
and in some regions successful sheep-
raising is practically impossible because
of its destructive raids. Experiments are
being made by the Biological Survey
and Forest Service to discover a cheap
method of fencing by means of which dep-
redations on sheep may be prevented.
Effective fencing of sheep against coy-
otes will compel these animals once more
to rely for food chiefly on rabbits, prairie
dogs, and other destructive rodents.
When all has been said, however, the
list of our wild mammals that are of
essential service to man is comparatively
small, even if we include in it a number
which are harmful and beneficial by
turns, like minks, coyotes, foxes, and
others, compared to the army that are
always and everywhere injurious.
WOLVES CAUSE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF
LOSS YEARLY
It was predicted that the extermina-
tion of the buffalo would be followed by
that of the big wolf, so intimately asso-
ciated were the two in the days when the
wolf used to prey on the young, the
aged, and the crippled buffalo ; and for a
time after our largest native mammal
succumbed to the robe-hunter it seemed
as if the prediction was likely to be ful-
filled, so scarce did wolves become. But
the old buffalo ranges soon filled with
cattle, and the wolf took on a new lease
of life, and in some localities now
threatens to become as numerous as in
former times. The value of the cattle
destroyed annually by wolves amounts
to millions of dollars, and this despite
the payment of large sums as bounty for
wolf scalps. After investigation the
Biological Survey has recommended
measures which it is believed will pre-
vent the greater part of the damage. The
most important of these are the sys-
tematic use of poison and the destruc-
tion of the wolf pups in the breeding
92
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
From the Biological Survey
THE RING-TAILED CIVET CAT OF THE SOUTHWESTERN UNITED STATES
A first-class mouser
dens. Wolves breed early in the year,
and when snow is on the ground may be
tracked to their dens with absolute cer-
tainty. Even when the ground is bare, a
skillful tracker, familiar with the country
and with the habits of the animal, can
usually locate the dens. By destroying
the increase and by the judicious use of
poison to insure the death of the old ones,
several millions of dollars may be saved
to the stockmen annually even now, while
the measures recommended, if energet-
ically and persistently followed up, are
likely to result in the practical extermina-
tion of these savage pests.
RATS AXD MICE ARE OUR MOST DREADED
ENEMIES
But the damage by wolves, panthers,
coyotes, and all the carnivores put to-
gether does not begin to equal the de-
struction wrought by the army of small
rodents, individually insignificant but
collectively a mighty pest. Rats alone do
an almost incalculable amount of harm
in the United States, and everywhere
they are deservedly dreaded, all the more
since by long contact and constant con-
flict with man they have become ex-
tremely sagacious and wary, and thus far
have been able to defy his utmost efforts
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93
I
From the Biological Survey
TEXAS WILD CAT
An active foe of noxious rodents
to exterminate them, or even to seriously
reduce their numbers, and as if the meas-
ure of their iniquity were not filled by the
wholesale destruction of merchandise,
household goods and foodstuffs, they are
now known to serve as carriers and dis-
seminators of that dread disease, the
plague; so that measures to exterminate
them, wherever that is possible, are
doubly important.
When is added to the total damage
done by rats the results of depredations
by meadow and house mice, by prairie
dogs, rabbits, gophers, ground squirrels,
and other small gnawing animals, the re-
sulting total, could it be ascertained,
would stagger belief. Unfortunately ac-
curate statistics of such damages are for
the most part wanting, but a single item
is suggestive. One of the small ground
94
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photo by Viola McColm
NOT DEAD, BUT PLAYING POSSUM
squirrels of Washington injures the
wheat crop in a single county of that
State to the extent of half a million dol-
lars annually. While the loss to this
country by rodents by no means equals
that caused by insects, the total reaches
far into the millions and is a serious drain
on the national resources.
To devise methods of combating these
pests, of reducing their numbers, and, if
possible, of accomplishing their exter-
mination is one of the important problems
dealt with by the Biological Survey. By
the use of traps, of poisoned foods, and
of gases to kill the animals in their bur-
rows, much has been accomplished.
Failure to secure the utmost results
aimed at by these methods is due chiefly
to the difficulty of securing the coopera-
tion of all the farmers in an infested re-
gion. It is evident that if a number of
landholders withhold their aid, their
farms become nurseries from which to re-
populate adjoining districts. Moreover,
in most regions there are sterile and un-
productive areas which receive no atten-
tion, and these again are harbors of ref-
uge for the pests which later emerge to
restock farming lands. Hence the con-
test appears to be a never-ending one,
and is a constant source of loss and an-
noyance to the farmer.
The difficulties of warfare against ro-
dents are in inverse proportion to the set-
tlement of the country. Where farms are
large and there is much waste land, the
difficulties are very great; but when
farms are comparatively small and there
is little unoccupied land, cooperation be-
tween landholders is easier to secure and
results are more encouraging. In parts of
Kansas, for instance, where formerly
farming population was scarce and
prairie dogs numerous and destructive,
the animals have been practically ex-
terminated as the result of the continued
effort of numerous ranchers working to-
gether for a common end and aided by
the state.
In attempting to devise more effective
means of abating rodent pests the atten-
tion of the Survey has been turned to a
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Photo by Bailey, Biological Survey
GRAY FOX — N£W MEXICO
study of the use of epidemic diseases —
nature's own method of destroying sur-
plus population. It has long been known
that at irregular intervals, when mam-
mals, especially rodents, that live in
crowded communities increase till they
are very numerous, they are suddenly
smitten with an epidemic which almost
wipes out the species over a considerable
area. In the case of such epidemics a
certain number of individuals either are
immune to the disease or recover from it ;
for while nature is prodigal with the lives
of individuals and wastes them with ap-
parent recklessness, she cherishes the
species and is chary of exposing one to
the risk of elimination. After a few years
the animal that has paid the price of too
great prosperity again multiplies beyond
limits, to be again reduced.
Efforts are now being made to obtain
cultures of the diseases which prevail
among the more destructive of our ro-
dents, so that they may be employed in
other regions where the animals are pests.
Since the cultures mav be renewed from
time to time, they can be kept indefinitely
and be ready for use as required. If they
prove as effective as when employed by
nature, the problem of a cheap and re-
liable method of dealing with destructive
rodents will have been solved.
Fox FARMING
Time was when it might almost have
been said that America furnished furs for
the world, and even now no inconsider-
able part of the fur harvest comes from
America. Year by year, however, the
harvest is diminishing, while the price of
furs is steadily advancing, till the finer
and rarer kinds are within the reach of
only the very wealthy. Foxes of the more
valuable kinds, for instance, once so nu-
merous in this country, are now compara-
tively scarce. Their fur is so valuable
and so much sought for that, instead of
trving to discover means to compass their
destruction, the Survey is now studying
the best methods of fox farming, with a
view to making the breeding of the
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97
TYPICAL BREEDING GROUNDS OF COYOTES IN WESTERN WYOMING
Photos by Bailey, Biological Survey
COYOTE PUPS AT MOUTH OF BREEDING DEN IN WYOMING
A family of coyote pups was found in the hole near cross on extreme right
98 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
I IHHi
Photo by Bailey, Biological Survey
A MUTE WITNESS TO THE DESTRUCTIVENESS OF MICHIGAN WOLVES — BODY OF DEER
LYING ON THE SNOW
animal in confinement not only possible
but remunerative. When silver fox
skins are worth from $300 to $600 a skin
it does not need a Colonel Sellers to see
golden possibilities in the business.
The raising of mink and beaver, and
perhaps otter, for their fur is also
thought to be entirely feasible. The
beaver is being protected in Canada and
in some of our own states. It should
be protected in all, for apparently pro-
tection is all that is required to enable the
animal to reestablish itself in many of its
old haunts. After being safeguarded for
a term of years, judicious trapping might
then be allowed, and thus this remarkable
and valuable fur-bearer be preserved in-
definitely, to be a source of both interest
and profit to future generations. Even
the despised skunk, which is easily cared
for and is wonderfully prolific, can, it is
believed, be raised in confinement with
profit.
The idea of raising furs for the market
is by no means new. Many attempts
have been made to breed foxes for profit,
especially in certain islands of Alaska,
where the conditions would seem to be
ideal. Some of the ventures appear to
have proved remunerative, but many fail-
ures have resulted, chiefly as the result
of inexperience and lack of knowledge,
especially of the proper feeding and care
of the animals. It is thought that the dif-
ficulties are by no means insuperable and
that they can be overcome by study and
carefully conducted experiments.
Thus the ends sought by the Biological
Survey in its investigations of mammals
differ considerably from those aimed at
in its study of birds. The more carefully
birds' habits are studied and their food
investigated, the more apparent is it that
man cannot do without them. Such is
by no means true of many of our indig-
enous mammals. Some are valuable be-
cause they destroy noxious insects and
noxious mammals ; others because they
furnish skins for use and comfort ; but
many are wholly noxious, or so nearly so
that they can be safely classed as such,
and their destruction compassed in every
possible way, though always with the en-
tailment of as little suffering as possible.
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99
APPLE TREK KILLED BY RABBITS
Photos from the Biological Survey
APPLE TREE KILLED BY FIELD MICE
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Photo from the Biological Survey
PRAIRIE DOGS AT MOUTH OF BURROW
y AND CROP ZONES
It has long been recognized that plants
and animals are not distributed fortui-
tously over the earth, but in their distribu-
tion are governed by well-defined laws.
Certain species and groups of species are
restricted to certain regions because of
peculiarities of climate, temperature, and
soil, summed up under the word environ-
ment, essential to their well being.
Cultivated plants are wild plants
tamed — wild plants modified to some ex-
tent by care and cultivation — but in their
nature and all essentials akin to their un-
cultivated ancestors. To a great extent,
then, the laws of distribution that apply
to wild plants and animals apply equally
well to cultivated varieties. The ready
application of these facts will appear from
an example. If on a certain mountain
side a particular crop is found to thrive,
and the observer happens to know the
particular plants, birds, and mammals
natural to the locality, when he visits a
different region where the same plants
and animals find a congenial home he
may be sure that the crop in question
will thrive there also.
Such being the case, it was early per-
ceived that a study of the distribution of
wild plants and animals and the mapping
of the natural areas of distribution could
be made to serve a practical use, whereby
the farmer would be saved enormous ex-
pense in experiments to ascertain the par-
ticular crops adapted to new localities.
Accordingly, in the summer of 1889 Mer-
riam selected the San Francisco mountain?
region of Arizona for an experimental
survey, and it is not too much to say that
the results of the work there revolution-
ized prevailing conceptions of the princi-
ples of geographic distribution.
In ascending the mountain a succession-
of climatic belts were traversed, similar
to the ones to be noted in traveling from
our southern boundaries to the Arctic,,
each zone or belt being characterized by
a distinct set of animals and plants.
THE POLICEMEN OF THE AIR
101
Among other results it was demonstrated
that the laws governing the distribution
of mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, and
plants are essentially the same. Hence a
map showing the boundaries of an area
inhabited by an association of species of
one group serves equally well for the
other groups. Comparison of the facts of
distribution as noted on this mountain
with corresponding facts over the country
at large disclosed three important truths :
(a) That the several life zones of the
mountain could be correlated with cor-
responding zones long recognized in the
eastern United States; (b) that these
same zones are really of transcontinental
extent, though never before recognized
in the West; and (c) that the faunas and
floras of North America as a whole, and,
for that matter, of the Northern Hemi-
sphere north of the tropical region, are
properly divisible into but two primary
life regions — a northern, or Boreal, and
Photo by Viola McColm
YOUNG COTTONTAIL, RABBITS IN NEST
a southern, or Austral (then termed
Sonoran), both stretching across the con-
tinent from ocean to ocean.
Subsequently a careful study of the
geographic distribution of plants and
animals was undertaken, to include the
whole of the United States and, where
necessary, the region contiguous.*
The practical use of zone maps is
easily understood. If, for instance, it is
ascertained that a certain crop thrives in
one part of a particular zone, it is to be
expected that elsewhere within the zone,
where similar local conditions prevail,
the same or a closely allied crop will do
well. As each zone includes thousands of
square miles, the value of such informa-
tion is obvious.
The final step toward making such
* The first announcement of the laws of tem-
perature control of the geographical distribu-
tion of terrestrial animals and plants was made
in this Magazine, vol. vi, 1894.
102 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photo by E. R. Warren
MOUSE
When numerous field mice do enormous damage to crops (see page 92)
zone maps of the utmost practical use —
and a very important one — is to accom-
pany the maps with a list of the fruits,
.grains, and vegetables best suited to each
zone. Thus the necessary experimenta-
tion on the part of the farmer is reduced
to a minimum. The farmer who wishes
to find land where a certain crop may
t>e planted with success, or the emigrant
in search of conditions similar to those
lie is familiar with at home, has only to
refer to the zone maps and to the lists
connected therewith.
A small scale zone map of the United
States has been completed, with lists of
the farm products most likely to thrive in
the several belts. While for general pur-
poses this map is very useful, it is by no
means detailed enough to give all the in-
formation the farmer or emigrant in
search of a new location desires. It is
the present purpose to survey each im-
portant agricultural state with sufficient
detail to enable life and crop zone maps
to be published, with lists of the crops
specially adapted to the several parts of
the respective states.
Such crop and zone maps are useful in
still another field. At the present time
the whole world is being searched by
specialists for fruits and plants, suited to
the conditions that prevail in our own
country. The usefulness of such maps
as a guide to the most favorable localities
in which to test the value of these foreign
importations can hardly be overestimated.
Noxious insects also in their dispersal
over the country follow the same faunal
belts, as do also many of the dis-
eases of domestic stock and even of man.
Yellow fever, the germs of which are
now known to be distributed by a mos-
quito, has been shown to be limited to
a transcontinental belt the boundaries of
which were laid down by the Survey
nearly twenty years ago.
Curiously enough the regions formerly
occupied by particular tribes of Indians
correspond in a general way with these
same life zones, as was pointed out by
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103
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Photo by Osgood, Biological Survey
SHELTER-HOUSE ON FOX FARM IN MAINE
Merriam. The Indian was largely de-
pendent for his livelihood upon the
natural fruits of the earth and upon
game, in the same way, though not to the
same extent, as were wild animals. Thus
the distribution of acorns, camas, pine
seeds, wild oats, and the thousand other
wild crops, as well as that of the birds
and animals which furnished them food
and raiment, to a great extent determined
the favorite haunts of the aborigines of
this continent.
CAME PROTECTION AND KINDRED SUBJECTS
What a glorious heritage of game, both
bird and beast, was bequeathed by the
Indians to our forebears, and with what
prodigality has it been wasted by them
and by ourselves ! Neither motives of
humanity nor far-sighted prescience de-
terred the Indian from wanton slaughter
of game. He killed animals and birds,
however, not for sport, but for food,
shelter, and raiment, and the very abun-
dance of game and his imperfect weapons
made game laws restrictive measures in
his time as unnecessary as they were un-
dreamed of.
Very different are present-day condi-
tions. Of the almost infinite number of
game birds and animals that once filled
our mountains and valleys only a small
remnant is left. The buffalo, that ranged
from the Atlantic to beyond the Rocky
Mountains and blackened the plains with
its countless numbers, is practically ex-
tinct in its wild state ; the antelope, bands
of which everywhere dotted the plains, is
rapidly approaching the same fate ; moose
and caribou, though still occurring over
much of their former range, are being
greatly reduced in numbers ; while elk,
deer, and mountain sheep are quite un-
known over much of the territory they
formerly inhabited. Our game birds are
facing the same fate. The present gen-
eration knows not the wild pigeon, flocks
of which used to darken the sun as they
swept across country. The various
THE POLICEMEN OF THE AIR
Photo by Bailey, Biological Survey
ASPEN BEING FEUDED BY BEAVER — NOTE SIZE Otf CHIPS
Photo by Bailey, Biological Survey
BEAVER DAM FROM BELOW NOTE STORAGE POND ABOVE DAM
The beaver is a natural ally of the reclamation engineer
io6 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photo from Mrs Charles Shaffer
HUDSON BAY SABLE
One of the most valuable American fur bearers
species of grouse and quail have been
decimated in many regions till only a
beggarly remnant remains, and even
ducks and geese, that with the changing
seasons once thronged our tidal waters
and waterways, have been so mercilessly
slaughtered that the future prospects of
more than one species looks dark. All
of our waders have been reduced in num-
bers and many are almost unknown
where formerly they used to cover the
sand and mud flats. Such facts suf-
ficiently empasize the need of game pro-
tection, and the study of ways and means
of preserving such of our game birds and
animals as still survive is regarded as one
of the pressing duties of the Biological
Survey.
We Americans did not at first welcome
the idea of close seasons, license systems,
game refuges, game wardens, and the
other measures necessary for the protec-
tion of wild life. To our forefathers of
not long ago the privilege of killing game
when needed was an absolute necessity,
and we have been so long accustomed to
the idea that game is public property, to
be appropriated by the first comer, that
we do not take kindly to restrictions of
any sort. Nevertheless both the theory
and practice of game and bird protection
are now firmly rooted in this country,,
THE POLICEMEN OF THE AIR
107
By courtesy of the Pacific Monthly
ORANGE GROVES OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In climbing the mountains in the background one traverses in succession all the life zones from
the orange belt (Lower Sonoran zone) to the frigid treeless summit (Alpine zone)
simply because of the self-evident fact
that without at least a measure of pro-
tection there will soon be no game left.
No duty can be plainer than to so care
for our game animals that the species
may be perpetuated for the pleasure and
use of future generations. We cannot
indeed pass on in full measure the heir-
loom we received, but many of our finest
game birds and animals still survive, to
insure a future supply, provided we re-
frain from wanton slaughter and protect
both wisely and well. The theory that
wild game is not and cannot be made the
property of the individual, but that it be-
longs to the state, which has the power
to regulate its use and preservation, is
now recognized almost everywhere, and
the recognition of this principle has
greatly aided the cause of game protec-
tion.
As the supply of native game birds di-
minishes, there appears to be a growing
tendency among sportsmen to import
birds from foreign countries for restock-
ing covers, and the Survey is constantly
in receipt of requests for information on
this subject. European partridges, caper-
cailzie, black game, willow and hazel
grouse, and several kinds of pheasants
have already been experimented with. It
is yet too soon to decide as to the ultimate
outcome of most of these efforts, but in
the West, especially in Oregon and
Washington, the introduction of pheas-
ants has been successful, and in certain
localities two species of these superb
game birds are very numerous. In parts
of the Atlantic States also they have been
successfully acclimatized.
Should it prove, as now appears prob-
able, that along with pheasants and other
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
foreign game birds diseases have been
introduced which threaten the safety of
our own native game birds, sportsmen
may conclude that by the importation of
foreign species they have lost more than
they have gained.
As most birds, including ducks and
geese, are migratory and do not breed in
the states through which they pass in
spring and fall, many now advocate
measures placing all migratory birds
under federal control. The present di-
versity of state laws and the wide differ-
ences in the dates of their open and close
seasons are the chief arguments for dele-
gating the care of migrants to central au-
thority. That the effect of such a meas-
ure would be to improve existing condi-
tions and extend the lease of life to many
species of ducks and shore birds now fast
approaching extinction can hardly be
doubted.
BIG-GAME REFUGES
The use of government reservations for
the preservation of wild animals in dan-
ger of extinction is a practical form of
protection which cannot be too highly
commended. The experiment on a large
scale was first tried in Yellowstone Park,
and the results there have been most
encouraging. Despite some poaching,
elk, antelope, and mountain sheep have
steadily increased in numbers, while buf-
falo also have thriven wonderfully.
The high price paid for elks' teeth is
a constant temptation to lawless hunters
to kill these superb animals. It is to be
hoped that the organization chiefly re-
sponsible for this demand will by official
action repudiate elks' teeth as a necessary
emblem of the order, and thus lend
material assistance in the effort to pre-
serve this, the noblest of our game
animals.
It is a pleasure to note that the co-
operation of private parties with the gov-
ernment authorities in efforts to per-
petuate our game animals are not want-
ing. An instance in point is Miller and
Lux's generous offer to the government
of their herd of elk on the Button Wil-
low Ranch, California. In 1905, under
the direction of the Biological Survey,
some 20 of these animals were success-
fully transferred to the Sequoia Na-
tional Park, in Tulare County, where they
promise to form the nucleus of a large
herd of this fine species.
The New York Zoological Society is
also actively interested in the preserva-
tion of our big game. Through its gen-
erous cooperation, the Wichita Game
Preserve in Oklahoma has become the
permanent home of a herd of buffalo.
The animals are confined to a suitable
area by means of a strong fence, and, as
the preserve is in the midst of their
former range, the success of the experi-
ment would seem to be assured. Under
what appear to be ideal conditions, the
herd is likely to increase notably, so that
in time it will be possible, if desired, to
stock other reserves from the surplus.
13 BIRD RESERVATIONS
The theory of the bird reservation is
nearly akin to that of the game refuge.
Formerly our coast teemed with bird life,
which consisted not only of migrants
from the far north, but of summer resi-
dents, which found the rocky and sandy
islets of our shores a very birds' paradise.
The rage for hat birds changed all this
and converted most of the former bird
resorts into solitudes, so far as bird life
is concerned. By setting aside here and
there an island of no particular use for
other purposes, the government has
established nurseries and winter resorts
where sea birds undisturbed may rear
their young and find shelter. The plan
has the energetic cooperation of the Na-
tional Audubon Society, which has estab-
lished island reserves of its own, and
whose good work in this and other fields
cannot be too highly extolled. The re-
sults attained are exceedingly satis-
factory, and thousands of gulls, terns,
pelicans, and other sea birds are reared
each vear in these bird resorts. Pelican
Island is likely to becomo one of the
sights of Florida, and already many
tourists have sought permission to visit
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THE POLICEMEN OF THE AIR
117
it to view the ungainly but interesting
birds attending to their domestic duties.
As a final result of the establishment
of bird refuges, there is every reason to
believe not only that these island bird
colonies will be maintained intact, but
that in time the birds will so multiply as
to restock other islands not under the
control of specially appointed wardens.
Thus far 13 reservations have been set
apart by the Government : Breton Island,
Louisiana; Pelican Island, Passage Key,
and Indian Key, Florida; Stump Lake,
North Dakota; Huron Islands, off the
south shore of Lake Superior, Michigan ;
Siskiwit Islands, south of Isle Royale,
Lake Superior; and a series of islands
off the coast of Oregon and Washington.
PROTECTION 01? GAME IN ALASKA
The big game of the world is fast be-
ing killed off. Nowadays no region is
too wild or remote to attract the sports-
man and the trophy hunter. Those who
read the accounts of the African ex-
plorers of scarcely more than a genera-
tion ago never dreamed that in a short
time the vast herds of wild game over
the greater part of that continent would
be a thing of the past. Alaska has now
become the Mecca toward which the
eyes of sportsmen are longingly turned,
and were all restrictions on the export of
trophies from that territory removed, a
very short period would suffice to see the
end of several notable game animals.
The Kenai Peninsula contains the largest
of the deer tribe in the world, the big
Kenai moose, and horns of one of these
animals, which sometimes spread 74
inches or more, command fabulous prices.
Other Alaska game animals are greatly
prized by sportsmen for trophies.
In a territory so remote from supplies
as Alaska, game possesses more than
ordinary value to its inhabitants, and the
primary purpose of the Alaska game law
was to preserve the game for the use of
the people, both natives and white. To
provide for emergencies, a special clause
in the present law allows Indians, Eski-
mos, miners, and explorers, when in need
of food or clothing, to kill game for their
immediate use. Prior to the passage of
the law, so many deer were killed for
their hides as to threaten the extinction of
these animals within accessible territory.
The law has been thought by many too
drastic, and has caused much dissatis-
faction.
A bill was introduced in the 59th
Congress, and passed the House, which
materially modifies the present law and is
very liberal with regard to the shipment
of trophies. It provides, among other
things, for the issuing of licenses to hunt
and to export a limited number of tro-
phies and for the employment of game
wardens and guides. Should this bill be-
come a law, many of the present causes
of complaint on the part of sportsmen
and residents of Alaska will be removed.
THE:
ACT
The so-called Lacey act, approved May
25, 1900, marked a long and important
step forward in the cause of bird and
game protection. Prior to its passage the
several states attempted in vain to pro-
hibit the shipment of game beyond their
boundaries. Game was forwarded to
other states and sold in distant markets,
without respect to season, under the plea
that by such shipment it had become an
article of interstate commerce and hence
was beyond the jurisdiction of the state
where offered for sale. All this was
changed by the Lacey act, which struck
at the root of the evil by prohibiting the
shipment from any state of birds killed
in violation of local laws, and placed im-
ported game on the same footing as birds
or animals produced within the state
where the game was sold.
This act confers upon the Department
of Agriculture important powers also in
relation to the importation of foreign
birds and animals, which prior to its pas-
sage was without check. It specifically
prohibits the introduction of certain
species, such as the English sparrow,
starling, flying-fox, mongoose, and such
others as mav be declared injurious to
agriculture ; for with the growth of our
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
commerce the danger of the introduction
of noxious birds, mammals, and insects is
ever present. To prevent the introduc-
tion of birds and mammals likely to be-
come pests is one of the special duties of
the Biological Survey.
-GUARDING AGAINST DANGEROUS IMPORTA-
TIONS
The English sparrow serves as an
ever-ready example of the disastrous
consequences of the unwise introduction
of a species into a new home. Under
the present law and system of inspection,
this pest could never have obtained a
foothold in America, since so well known
were the bird's habits in its native land
that its disastrous career on this con-
tinent would have been foreseen and its
entry prohibited.
Under the mistaken idea that the
mongoose would prove beneficial by de-
voting itself to the destruction of small
rodents, and ignorant of the fact that the
animal is omnivorous and one of the most
destructive creatures in existence, more
than one attempt has been made to im-
port it into the United States, where its
successful introduction would prove noth-
ing less than a national calamity.
Attempts to bring in numerous noxious
birds and beasts have been frustrated
only by the vigilance of the inspectors.
It is, however, necessary to guard not
only against intentional importation of
noxious species from mistaken philan-
thropic motives, but unintentional ones;
and when it is understood that under the
433 permits issued last year for the entry
of foreign birds and animals were in-
cluded 274,914 canaries, 47,383 miscel-
laneous birds, and 654 mammals, it will
be seen that mistakes of identity by im-
porters might easily be made, and that
under the guise of innocent species nox-
ious ones might find entrance. Every
shipment of birds or beasts, therefore, is
carefully scanned by expert agents, who
seize upon noxious species and prevent
their entry into the country by compelling
their destruction or their return to the
port of shipment. The Lacey act is not
intended to restrict legitimate trade or
work undue hardship on importers. In
the great majority of cases it can be
enforced so as to cause only slight delay
and yet prevent the entry of species which
may become pests.
As will appear from this short sketch,
the work of the Biological Survey is em-
inently practical in its nature and intent.
Beginning with investigations of the food
habits of a few of our most important
birds, the scope of its work has widened
until it involves the study of all our birds
and mammals in their manifold relations
to man. The essential objects of this
branch of the work are to show from a
basis of ascertained fact the particular
species that are beneficial and those that
are injurious, and to indicate the best
methods of preserving the one class and
of destroying the other. Incidental to
its main object, it endeavors to collect
and to supply to those interested all
available information relative to the dis-
tribution and abundance of our game and
of our birds and mammals. Its list of
publications is already a long one. Many
of its reports are purely practical, in-
tended for the information and guidance
of the farmer; others are more strictly
scientific and are designed to serve ed-
ucational purposes.
Strange as it may seem, the United
States, one of the youngest of the world's
powers, is a pioneer in the kind of eco-
nomic work outlined in the present paper.
European countries, however, are now
recognizing the immense importance to
agriculture of such investigations and
their absolute necessity as the basis for
national and international laws.
As the world's population increases
and as vast regions of land now wild
and uncultivated are brought under the
plow, so must investigations of the kind
entrusted by Congress to the Biological
Survey ever assume more and more im-
portance.
A FEW THOUGHTS CONCERNING
EUGENICS
BY ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
The following paper is an address by Dr Bell to the American Breeders' As-
sociation at the recent convention of the Association in Washington, January,.
1908. This Association was formed several years ago to encourage those per-
sons of the United States working to improve our plants and animals. The
President of the Association is Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture,
and the Secretary, Hon. Willett M. Hayes, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture.
Every person who is interested in the scientific work of the Government and of
individuals of the United States to create stronger and more productive varieties
of animals or plants is eligible for membership. The Association is doing splen-
did work in collecting and distributing the results of the many workers along
these lines. One branch of the Association includes efforts to improve the human
race, and it was as a member of the Committee on this subject of eugenics that
Dr Bell presented this address.
THE subject you have entrusted
to your Committee on Eugenics
is of transcendent importance to
mankind. It is no less a question than the
consideration of whether it is possible to
apply the principles of selective breeding
to man for the benefit of the human race.
If it is true that "the proper study of man
is man," no higher or nobler subject of
research can be found.
I esteem it an honor to have been se-
lected by you to serve on the committee
having this matter in charge, and to be
associated with the eminent men who
compose the committee, under the lead-
ership of Dr David Starr Jordan, Presi-
dent of Leland Stanford University.
President Jordan, as chairman, has
already presented a preliminary report
for the committee, which has met with
the ready acceptance of all the members.
As the Committee on Eugenics has not
yet held a meeting for conference and
discussion, it will of course be understood
that anything I may say upon the sub-
ject today expresses merely my own in-
dividual views, for which the committee
is in no way responsible.
The improvement of the human race
depends largely upon two great factors,
heredity and environment; and we deal
chiefly with the question of heredity. It
is a breeder's problem with which we are
mainly concerned and not a question of
education or environment.
We have learned to apply the laws of
heredity so as to modify and improve our
breeds of domestic animals. Can the
knowledge and experience so gained be
made available to man, so as to enable
him to improve the species to which he
himself belongs ?
Can we formulate practical plans that
might lead to the breeding of better men
and better women? This is the great
question we are called upon to consider.
The problem is one of great difficulty
and perplexity, for its solution depends
upon the possibility of controlling the
production of offspring from human
beings. By no process of compulsion can
this be done. The controlling power, if
it is possible to evoke it in the interests
of the race, resides exclusively with the
individuals most immediately concerned.
This fact, I think, should be recognized
as fundamental, so that our processes
should be persuasive rather than manda-
tory.
The great hope lies in the fact that
human beings possess intelligence, and
a desire that their offspring may be fully
up to the average of the race in every
particular, if not superior. It is cer-
tainly the case that no man desires that
his children shall be weak, sickly, defec-
tive, or in any way inferior in physical
or mental endowments. A condition of
sentiment therefore prevails that is emi-
nently favorable to voluntary compliance
120
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
with plans that appeal to reason and
sound judgment. The mere dissemina-
tion of information concerning those con-
ditions that result in superior or inferior
offspring would of itself tend to promote
the production of the superior and to
lessen the production of the inferior ele-
ments.
Knowledge is what is wanted, and the
dissemination of that knowledge among
the people. There is a wide field here
for your Committee on Eugenics, or for
some great national organization or so-
ciety devoted to the increase and dif-
fusion of knowledge concerning eugenics.
CONSANGUINEOUS MARRIAGES.
If it should be clearly shown that
certain classes of marriages are hurtful
to the offspring and others beneficial,
the mere dissemination of that knowledge
would of itself tend to promote desirable
and prevent undesirable unions of the
sexes. Would any reasonable person, for
instance, think of marrying his first
cousin, any more than he would dream of
marrying his sister, if he really believed
that any harm would result to the off-
spring; and if you could find one such
person could you find two — for it takes
two to make a marriage.
The fact that such marriages are con-
tracted in spite of legislative prohibition
in several of our states, and in spite of a
considerable public feeling against such
unions, simply shows that there is a
difference of opinion upon the subject.
The only justification for legislative
interference lies in the belief that con-
sanguineous marriages are harmful to the
offspring. The only justification for mar-
riage under such circumstances lies in
the belief that they are not harmful — at
least, in particular cases. A question of
fact is here involved, not mere opinion.
Are they harmful or are they not Or if
they are harmful in some cases and not in
others, what are the conditions under
which they are harmful ? These are ques-
tions that might well be considered by
your Committee on Eugenics.
The experience of breeders of animals
would be especially helpful in this con-
nection. It is extremely difficult to collect
statistics upon a large scale regarding
consanguineous unions among human
beings, but a breeders' association could
surely supply statistics concerning ani-
mals. We all know that the laws of
heredity that apply to animals also apply
to man; and statistics of in-breeding
would be of great value if they could be
so arranged as to throw light upon the
effect of consanguineous unions in hu-
man beings. I understand that while
breeders recognize an element of danger
in consanguineous unions, and especially
in continuous in-breeding for a number of
successive generations, they constantly
resort to in-breeding to perpetuate and
intensify desirable characteristics. In
fact, it is usually through in-breeding that
thoroughbreds are produced; and it is
chiefly through the prepotency of thor-
oughbreds that races of domestic animals
are improved. If there are any condi-
tions under which consanguineous unions
would be of benefit to man they should
be made known, so as to enable us to un-
derstand, certainly, what conditions are
beneficial and what harmful, to the
end that public opinion may be rightly
guided in its treatment of this important
subject.
We have statistics which indicate very
clearly that consanguineous unions should
not be contracted by defective persons,
and the results obtained by Dr E. A. Fay*
are specially significant in this con-
nection. He shows that there is con-
siderable liability to the production of
deaf offspring where a deaf-mute marries
a blood relative, even in cases where the
original deafness was not congenital.
The statistics of the twelfth census f of
the United States show that at least 4.5
per cent of the deaf of the country, and 4.5
per cent of the blind are the offspring of
consanguineous marriages, but we do not
know conclusively whether consanguinity
in the parents produces the defective con-
* Marriages of the Deaf in America, by Ed-
ward Allen Fay. Published by the Volta
Bureau, Washington, D. C., 1898.
f Special Report on the Blind and the Deaf
in 1900. U. S. Census publication, Washington,
D. C, 1906.
A FEW THOUGHTS CONCERNING EUGENICS 121
dition, or whether it simply intensifies a
preexisting tendency in the family.* The
largest percentages of children of
cousin marriages are found among the
deaf who have deaf relatives (8.8 per
cent), and among the blind who have
blind relatives (9.5 per cent) ; whereas in
sporadic cases the percentage falls to
little more than 3 per cent — that is, about
3 per cent of the deaf who have no deaf
relatives (3.3 per cent) and about 3 per
cent of the blind who have no blind rela-
tives (3.2 per cent) are the offspring of
cousin marriages. This may mean a
great deal or it may mean nothing at all.
Should we find, for example, that 3
per cent of the population of the United
States are the offspring of consangui-
neous unions there would be no proof that
the consanguinity of the parents had
anything to do with the production of the
defect in these cases. Statistics showing
the proportion of the whole population
who are the offspring of consanguineous
marriages are much needed, and the
whole subject, I think, might very prop-
erly be investigated through the medium
of the United States Census Bureau.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INFERIOR IS
OVERRATED
In any large aggregate of individuals
the vast majority will be of the average
type of the race. Some few will be
markedly superior and some few inferior.
An increase in the superior element
seems to be a more important factor in
producing improvement than a decrease
in the inferior element. Even were we to
go to the extreme length of cutting off
entirely the reproduction of the inferior,
this would not lead to an increase in the
numbers of the superior, but on the con-
trary to a decrease; for some of the su-
perior are the offspring of inferior par-
ents, just as some of the inferior are the
offspring of superior.
In the case of superior, average, and
inferior persons all three classes would
be reproduced in the offspring, but
in different proportions. There would
be a larger proportion of superior
children among the offspring of the
superior than of the average or in-
ferior, and a larger proportion of inferior
among the offspring of the inferior. The
cutting off of the inferior would simply
prevent deterioration by lessening the
production of inferior offspring. It
would not operate to cause an improve-
ment by an increase of the superior ele-
ment.
I am much struck by the thought that
neither the quantity nor quality of the
The Deaf of the United States in 1900 from Census Table XLVII, omitting "not stated" cases
relating to consanguinity of parents and Deaf Relatives.
The deaf.
Numbers.
Percentage.
Total.
Parents
cousins.
Parents
not
cousins.
Parents
cousins.
Parents
not
cousins.
Total
77,550
24,723
52,827
3,9H
2,171
1,740
73,639
22,552
51,087
5-o
8.8
3-3
95-o
91.2
96.7
Deaf relatives (a or b) :
Deaf relatives
No deaf relatives
The Blind of the United States in 1900 from Census Table XVIII, omitting "not stated" cases
relating to consanguinity of parents and Blind Relatives.
Numbers.
Perce
titage.
The blind.
Total.
Parents
cousins.
Parents
not
cousins.
Parents
cousins.
Parents
not
cousins.
Total
55,307
2,449
52,858
4-4
95-6
Blind relatives (a, b, or r) :
Blind relatives
10,483
993
9,490
9-5
90.5
No blind relatives
44,824
i,456
43,368
3-2
96.8
122
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
superior element would be increased by
cutting off the inferior element from re-
production, and I begin to suspect that
students of eugenics have overrated the
importance of legislative interference
with the marriages of the inferior.
CELIBATE FELLOWSHIPS
A similar process of reasoning leads
to the conclusion that the cutting off of
the superior element from reproduction
would retard the improvement of the race
by lessening the production of superior
offspring without injuring the community
by increasing the production of the in-
ferior elements.
The establishment of celibate fellow-
ships in some of the oldest of the British
universities is a case in point. The an-
nual grants are sufficiently large to sup-
port the recipients in comfort, so as to
enable them to devote their whole lives
to some branch of literature, science, or
art undisturbed by the necessity of earn-
ing a livelihood. Of course there is
great competition to secure such prizes,
and the finest and brightest young men
are selected by competitive examinations
to receive the fellowships. Thus young
men of the most brilliant intellectual at-
tainments are enabled to secure a support
for life — but only on the condition of
celibacy. The moment they marry they
lose their fellowships. If there are many
of these fellowships, and if the plan has
been in operation for any considerable
period of time, it might be well for
students of eugenics to inquire whether
the establishment of celibate fellowships
in the past has had anything to do with
the scarcity of young men of the highest
intellectual caliber that is so much de-
plored in England today. Whether it has
or has not, it would certainly seem more
advisable in the interests of the commu-
nity that such fellowships should be
granted upon the condition of marriage
rather than celibacy.
PREPOTENCY — THE KEY TO THE PROBLEM
Superior individuals on the whole have
a larger proportion of superior offspring
than the average of the race. Of course
in cases where both parents were superior
this prepotency is increased. It would be
still further increased if all the four
grandparents were superior, and if three
or four generations of ancestors were all
individually superior a thoroughbred
would be produced. We are all familiar
with the prepotency of the thoroughbred
among animals. Indeed, as I have said
before, it is mainly through the use of
thoroughbreds that we improve our
stocks of domestic animals. In the case
of men and women who are thorough-
bred in respect to the points of superi-
ority, it is obvious that their descend-
ants, spreading out among the population
and marrying into average or inferior
families, would prove prepotent over their
partners in marriage in affecting the off-
spring, thus leading to an increase in the
proportion of superior offspring produced
from the average or inferior with whom
they have mated. Thus not only would
the proportion of superior offspring pro-
duced by the community as a whole be
increased, but the level of superiority in
the superior class would also be raised.
There would thus be a general advance
in the possession of desirable qualities all
along the line from the lowest to the
highest. Is not this what we mean by
improvement of the species?
LEGISLATIVE RESTRICTIONS UPON MAR-
RIAGE UNWISE
This result, I am inclined to believe,
would follow from the simple process of
promoting the marriage of the superior
withjhe superior without resort to legis-
lative restrictions upon marriage to re-
duce the production of the inferior.
Of course, such restrictions should be
considered, but the moment we propose
to interfere with the liberty of marriage
we tread upon dangerous ground. The
institution of marriage not only provides
for the production of offspring, but for
the production of morality in the com-
munity at large. This is a powerful reason
why we should not interfere with it any
more than can possibly be helped. There
are other reasons, however, arising from
a consideration of the rights possessed
by individuals in a free community.
Among the inalienable rights recog-
A FEW THOUGHTS CONCERNING EUGENICS 123
nized by the Declaration of Independence
are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap-
piness." The community has no right
to interfere with the liberty of the
individual and his pursuit of happiness in
marriage unless the interests of the com-
munity are demonstrably endangered.
The happiness of individuals is often pro-
moted by marriage even in cases where
the offspring may not be desirable. The
production of undesirable children is, of
course, an injury to the community, and
there may perhaps be cases where legal
checks may be justified; but it should not
be lost sight of that there are other checks
that are equally if not more efficient that
can be brought into play. If the condi-
tions that produce undesirable offspring
could be authoritatively stated, pruden-
tial restraints are apt to arise in cases
where defective offspring are likely to be
produced. Where the genera! intelli-
gence of the individuals concerned is at
fault, or their duty to the community is
not fully understood or realized, another
check comes into play far more efficient
than any legal restriction. Public opinion
is a great compelling force and few there
are who can resist it.
Legal prohibition of marriage should
only be resorted to in cases where there
could be no manner of doubt that the
community would suffer as the result of
the marriage. Where doubt exists the
community has no right to interfere with
this most sacred and personal of all re-
lations ; and morality in the community
would certainly be more promoted by
affording the widest possible liberty of
marriage than by restricting it. After
all, the interests of the community are
affected not so much by the fact of a mar-
riage as by the production of undesirable
offspring. The only reason why legis-
lation against marriage should be con-
sidered at all lies in the fact that we
cannot well legislate against the produc-
tion of offspring. Unfortunately prohi-
bition of marriage does not necessarily
prevent the production of offspring. It
is surely advisable that the children born
in a community should have legal fathers
and mothers as much as possible. Public
opinion, and the desire of all persons to
have healthy offspring, would, in my
judgment, be a more powerful deterrent
to the production of undesirable offspring
than a compulsory process of law. Throw
wide the gates of marriage, and where
children are produced close tight the
doors of divorce. Every child is entitled
by nature to a father and mother; and
no people should produce children who
are not prepared to give them parental
care for life. Without going to extremes,
I would say that the interests of the com-
munity demand that we should make
marriage easy and divorce difficult.
NEW BLOOD
The problem of improving a race of
human beings is a most perplexing one to
handle. The process of improvement
must be slow where the forces concerned
act from within and are not amenable to
control from without. Under the best
conditions it would require several gener-
ations to produce sensible results ; but in
the United States we have, in the new
blood introduced from abroad, an im-
portant means of improvement that will
act more quickly and that is eminently
susceptible to control. All the nations of
the world are today contributing elements
to our population ; and we have ,now, and
now only, the opportunity of studying the
process of absorption before it is com-
plete. Why should not Congress provide
for an ethnical survey of the people of the
United States. We should have definite
and reliable information concerning those
foreign elements which are beneficial to
our people and those which are harmful.
The grand spectacle is presented to our
eyes of a new people being gradually
evolved in the United States by the ming-
ling together of the different races of the
world in varying proportions. It is of
the greatest consequence to us that the
final result should be the evolution of a
higher and nobler type of man in Amer-
ica, and not deterioration of the nation.
To this end the process of evolution
should be carefully studied, and then con-
trolled by suitable immigration laws tend-
ing to eliminate undesirable ethnical ele-
ments, and to stimulate the admission of
elements assimilated readily by our popu-
lation and that tend to raise the standard
of manhood here.
124
THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION
THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION
THE Yearbook of the Carnegie Insti-
tution for 1907 just issued contains
a summary by President Woodward of
the five years' work of the institution, and
an outline of its future plans. Many im-
portant investigations, too expensive or
extraordinary for other institutions, and
requiring years of consecutive work, have
been begun. The benefits thus guaran-
teed to mankind cannot be measured.
The institution expended $702,534.39
in 1907 out of its endowment income for
its projects of research and for publica-
tion and administration. The aggregate
receipts thus far from interest on endow-
ment, etc., have been $2,891,370.66, and
•of this sum in six years there has been
•disbursed $2,683,073.16.
President Woodward gives the follow-
ing list of the larger projects, or depart-
ments of work, and of the directors
conducting the researches in the depart-
ments, or laboratories :
Botanical Research : D. T. MacDougal
Economics and Sociology: Carroll D. Wright
Experimental Evolution : Chas. B. Davenport
Geophysical Laboratory: Arthur L. Day
Historical Research : J. F. Jameson
Marine Biology: Alfred G. Mayer
Meridian Astrometry : Lewis Boss
Nutrition Laboratory : Francis G. Benedict
Solar Observatory: George E. Hale
Terrestrial Magnetism: L. A. Bauer.
To this list may be added the work in
horticulture carried on in the main by Mr
Luther Burbank, but in a supplementary
way also under the auspices of a com-
mittee consisting of the President and the
heads of the three departments of bio-
logical research.
The minor projects and labors of re-
search have been along the lines of :
Anthropology
Archeology
Astronomy
Bibliography
Botany
Chemistry
Economics
Engineering
Exploration
Geology
Geophysics
History
Literature
Mathematics
Meteorology
Paleontology
Philology
Phonetics
Physics
Physiology
Psychology
Zoology
Among the notable publications of the
year is No. 81, in which Director Mac-
Dougal gives an account of the produc-
tion of a new species of plant by an appli-
cation of chemical fluids to the parent
plant seeds during the period of germina-
tion. This remarkable achievement must
be regarded as one of the noteworthy ad-
vances in modern biology.
In its magnetic survey of the Pacific
Ocean up to September i, 1907, the
Galilee has traversed nearly 50,000 miles
in the Pacific Ocean along courses where
few magnetic observations have been
made hitherto. Complete measurements
of magnetic declination, dip, and inten-
sity were secured at intervals of 200 to
250 miles along these courses, as well as
at numerous points on islands and at
prominent ports. All of the results of
this extensive survey available in March
of the past year were furnished to the
U. S. Navy Department and incorporated
in a magnetic chart issued in May last
by that department for the benefit of
mariners. Important errors in previous
charts, amounting in cases to as much as
5° .in magnetic declination along some
main routes of transportation, were thus
corrected.
The Department of Economics is mak-
ing a stud}' of our immigrant population.
A JUMPING SALMON
THE picture on the following page is
an enlargement of a ''snapshot"
taken by Dr Richard D. Harlan, of The
George Washington University, in Sep-
tember, 1907, of a salmon trying to leap
up the falls of the River Shinn, on Mr
Andrew Carnegie's estate at Skibo, Scot-
land. The fish were about 2.y2 feet long.
On that particular day some of them
made the effort at frequent intervals, of a
minute or two, to get up the falls, which
were about 12 feet high. None of them
were successful on that occasion because
of the great volume of water. The fish
in this picture struck fully 6 feet above
the level of the lower stream, only^ to be
hurled back. The picture has been en-
larged without any retouching.
A JUMPING SALMON
'25
SALMON CAUGHT IN THE} ACT OF TRYING TO LEAP UP THE
OF THFy SHINN
126
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
o >
si
CHILDREN OF THE WORLD
127
Copyright, 1908, by Underwood & Underwood
BOYS AND GIRLS OF AVE MARIA CHARITY SCHOOL, GRANADA, SPAIN
128 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
CHILDREN OF THE WORLD
i 29
Copyright, 1908, by Underwood & Underwood!
PUPILS OF A MISSIONARY SCHOOL IN CHINA
130
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
CHILDREN OF THE WORLD
Copyright, 1908, by Underwood & Underwood
GIRLS UNDER THE TRESS, TOKIO, JAPAN
132 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
5<
fir
*
Copyright, 1908, by Underwood & Underwood
A GROUP OF BURMESE CHILDREN
CHILDREN OF THE WORLD
133
Copyright, 1908, by Underwood & Underwood^
INDIA OF TOMORROW
Handsome school boys of Amritsar at the Golden Temple beside the Holy Tank
134 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Copyright, 1908, by Underwood & Underwood
A GROUP OF SCHOOIv-GIRIvS IN KAPIOLANI PARK, HONOLULU, HAWAII
CHILDREN OF THE WORLD
'35
Copyright, 1908, by Underwood & Underwood
SCHOOL IN CEYLON, SHOWING PUPILS, TEACHER, AND SCHOOL-HOUSE
136
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
CHILDREN OF THE WORLD
137
1
Is
= 8
.» a
5 <
W
OS
O
'38
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
CHILDREN OF THE WORLD
'39
Copyright, 1908, by Underwood & Underwood
MEETING AT MISSION SCHOOL AT NIBUNZA BOBUNA VILLAGE, CONGO
140
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Copyright, 1908, by Underwood & Underwood
BOYS STUDYING ON THE HOUSETOP AT ASSIOUT, EGYPT
TEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES
The following article has been abstracted from the report of the Secretary of
War, Hon. William H. Taft, on his recent trip to the Philippines and the opening
of the Philippine National Assembly. The report contains a review of zvhat the
United States have done in the Philippine Islands since our acquisition of them
nearly ten years ago. The Americans are driving Asiatic cholera, bubonic plague,
and smallpox, which formerly caused thousands and thousands of deaths annually,
out of the Philippine Islands as thoroughly as they have freed Panama from
yellow fever. President Roosevelt, in transmitting the report to Congress, could
rightly say:
"No great civilized power has ever managed with such wisdom and disinter-
estedness the affairs of a people committed by the accident of war to its
hands. . . . Save only our attitude toward Cuba, I question whether there
is a brighter page in the annals of international dealing betiveen the strong and
the weak than the page which tells of our doings in the Philippines."
PEACE prevails throughout the
Philippines today in a greater
degree than ever in the history
of the islands, either under Spanish or
American rule, and agriculture is no-
where now impeded by the fear on
the part of the farmer of the incursion
of predatory bands. A community con-
sisting of 7,000,000 people, inhabiting
300 different islands, many of whom were
in open rebellion against the government
of the United States for four years, with
all the disturbances following from rob-
ber and predatory bands which broke out
from time to time, due to local causes,
has been brought to a state of profound
peace and tranquillity in which the people
as a whole are loyally supporting the
government in the maintenance of order.
This is the first and possibly the most im-
portant accomplishment of the United
States in the Philippines.
Our national policy is to govern the
Philippine Islands for the benefit and
welfare and uplifting of the people of the
islands and gradually to extend to them,
as they shall show themselves fit to exer-
cise it, a greater and greater measure of
popular self-government. One of the
corollaries to this proposition is that the
United States in its government of the
islands will use every effort to increase
the capacity of the Filipinos to exercise
political power, both by general education
of the densely ignorant masses and by
actual practice, in partial self-govern-
ment, of those whose political capacity
is such that practice can benefit it with-
out too great injury to the efficiency of
government. What should be empha-
sized in the statement of our national pol-
icy is that we wish to prepare the Fili-
pinos for popular self-government.
THE) NATIONAL ASSEMBLY IS DEVISED TO
TRAIN THE EDUCATED CLASSES IN SELF-
GOVERNMENT WHILE THE IGNORANT
MASSES ARE BEING EDUCATED
The organization of the National As-
sembly is one of the great steps in the
education of the Filipino people for com-
plete self-government.
I do not for a moment guarantee that
there will not at times be radical action
by the Assembly, which cannot meet the
approval of those who understand the
legislative needs of the islands, but all I
wish to say is that the organization and
beginning of the life of the Assembly
have disappointed its would-be critics
and have given great encouragement to
those who were responsible for its exten-
sion of political power.
The Assembly has shown a most
earnest desire, and its leaders have ex-
pressed with the. utmost emphasis their
intention, to labor for the material pros-
perity of the Philippines and to encour-
age the coming of capital and the de-
velopment of the various plans for the
improvement of the agriculture and busi-
ness of the islands which have com-
mended themselves to those in the past
responsible for the government there.
In other words, thus far the Assembly
has not manifested in any way that ob-
structive character which those who have
prophesied its failure expected to sec.
In arguing that the Philippines are en-
tirely fit for self-government now, a com-
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
mittee of educated Filipinos once filed
with the civil governor a written brief in
which it was set forth that the number of
"ilustrados" in the islands was double
that of the offices — central, provincial,
and municipal — and therefore the coun-
try afforded two "shifts" of persons com-
petent to run the government. This, it
was said, made clear the possibility of a
good government if independence was
granted. The ignorance of the remainder
of the people, admitted to be dense, made
no difference. I cite this to show of how
little importance an intelligent public
opinion or an educated constituency is
regarded in the community and govern-
ment which many of the educated Fili-
pinos look forward to as a result of in-
dependence.
THE; FILIPINO is THE: ONLY MALAY RACE
THAT is CHRISTIAN
No one denies that 80 per cent of the
Filipino people are densely ignorant.
They are in a state of Christian tutelage.
They are childlike and simple, with no
language but a local Malay dialect spoken
in a few provinces; they are separate
from the world's progress. The whole
tendency under the Spaniards was to
keep them ignorant and innocent. The
Spanish public-school system was chiefly
on paper. They were for a long time
subject completely to the control of the
Spanish friar, who was parish priest and
who generally did not encourage 'the
learning of Spanish or great acquaint-
ance with the world at large.
The world owes to the Spanish friar
the Christianization of the Filipino race.
It is the only Malay or oriental race that
is Christian. The friars beat back the
wave of Mohammedanism and spread
their religion through all the islands.
They taught the people the arts of agri-
culture, but they believed it best to keep
them in a state of innocent ignorance.
They feared the influence of world knowl-
edge. They controlled the people and
preached to them in their own dialects.
They lived and died among them.
The friars left the people a Christian
people — that is, a people with western
ideals. They looked toward Rome, and
Europe, and America. They were not
like the Mohammedan or the Buddhisty
who despise western civilization as in-
ferior. They were in a state of tutelage,
ripe to receive modern western concep-
tions as they should be educated to un-
derstand them. This is the reason why
I believe that the whole Christian Filipino
people are capable by training and ex-
perience of becoming a self-governing
people. But for the present they are
ignorant and in the condition of children.
THE: PROBLEM CAN BE SOLVED BY THE
EDUCATION OF ONE GENERATION
There is no real difference between the
educated and ignorant Filipinos that can-
not be overcome by the education of one
generation. They are a capable people
in the sense that they can be given a
normal intellectual development by the
same kind of education that is given in
our own common-school system. Now
they have not intelligence enough to exer-
cise the political franchise with safety to
themselves or their country ; but I do not
see why a common-school education in
English, with industrial teaching added,
may not make the children of these people
capable of forming an intelligent public
opinion needed to sustain a popular gov-
ernment if, at the same time that the on-
coming generations are being educated
in schools, primary and industrial, those
who are intelligent are being given a
political education by actually exercising
the power of the franchise and actually
taking part in the government.
The Philippine government, however,
has not funds enough to educate in pri-
mary and industrial schools all the pres-
ent generation of school age, and unless
some other source of funds than govern-
mental revenues is found it will take
longer than a generation to complete the
primary and industrial education of the
common people. Until that is done, we
ought not to lift our guiding hand from
the helm of the ship of state of the Phil-
ippine Islands.
The language selected for the schools
is English. It is selected because it is the
TEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES
"43
language of business in the Orient, be-
cause it is the language of free institu-
tions, and because it is the language
which the Filipino children who do not
know Spanish are able more easily to
learn than they are to learn Span-
ish, and it is the language of the
present sovereign of the islands. The
education in English began with the sol-
diers of the American Army, one of
whom was detailed from each company to
teach schools in the villages which had
become peaceful. When the Commis-
sion assumed authority it s^ut to the
United States for 1,000 American teach-
ers, and after the arrival of these pioneers
in the islands a system of primary schools
was inaugurated together with normal
schools.
There are engaged in the teaching of
these schools at present 717 permanent
American teachers and 109 temporary
appointees, and all of these are paid out
of the central treasury.
6,000 FILIPINOS TEACHING PCNGUSH
The 6,000 Filipino teachers who are
now teaching English have received their
English education from our normal
schools or our American teachers. Their
number is growing, and they represent
and are the most valuable educational
asset we have acquired in working out
our school system. The Filipino insular
teachers are drawn from graduates of
normal schools and also from the students
sent by the government and at the ex-
pense of the government to the United
States to be educated there. Forty-six
of these students have recently returned
from the United States and have been
appointed as insular teachers at salaries
ranging from 840 to 960 pesos per an-
num. We are not able to educate as
they should be educated more than a
half of the youth of school age in the
islands. The government, while contrib-
uting to the maintenance of high schools
in each province, is devoting its chief at-
tention to the spread of primary educa-
tion, and in connection with primary edu-
cation, and, at its close in the interme-
diate schools, to industrial education.
Primary and industrial education carried
on until the child is 14 or 15 years old is
thought to be the best means of develop-
ing the Filipino people into a self-sustain-
ing and self-governing people, and the
present government has done all that it
has been possible to do in developing and
maintaining a proper system for this
purpose.
ALREADY MORE FILIPINOS SPEAK ENGLISH
THAN SPEAK SPANISH
The influence of the primary instruc-
tion in English is shown throughout the
islands by the fact that today more
people throughout the islands, outside of
Manila and the large cities, speak Eng-
lish than speak Spanish. At times, as
already intimated, a discordant note is
heard in the suggestion that the American
government is seeking to deprive the
Filipino of his native language. As his
native language is really 15 or 16 differ-
ent dialects, this does not seem a great
deprivation.
Should Congress be anxious to facili-
tate and hurry on the work of redeeming
the Philippine Islands and making the
Filipino people a self-governing commu-
nity, it could take no more effective step
than a permanent appropriation of two or
three millions of dollars for ten or fifteen
years to the primary and industrial edu-
cation of the Filipino people, making it
conditional on the continued appropria-
tion by the Philippine government of the
same amount to educational purposes
which it has devoted and is now devoting
annually to that purpose. The influence
of the educational system introduced has
not only been direct in the spread of edu-
cation among the younger of the present
generation, but it has also been an indi-
rect means of convincing the Filipino
people at large of the beneficent purpose
of the American government in its re-
maining in the Philippine Islands and of
the sincerity of its efforts in the interest
of their people.
FILIPINO CADETS AT WEST POINT
Section 36 of the act of Congress ap-
proved February 2, 1901, referring to
Philippine Scouts, provides that—
"When, in the opinion of the President,
144
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
natives of the Philippine Islands shall,
by their services and character, show fit-
ness for command, the President is au-
thorized to make provisional appoint-
ments to the grades of second and first
lieutenants from such natives, who, when
so appointed, shall have the pay and
allowances to be fixed by the Secretary
of War, not exceeding those of corre-
sponding grades of the regular army."
As it is thought that better results will
be obtained if a few young Filipinos,
especially selected, be appointed to the
United States Military Academy with a
view to their being commissioned officers
of scouts upon graduation, I strongly
recommend that Congress, by appropri-
ate legislation, authorize the appointment
of seven young Filipinos, or one for about
every million of inhabitants of those
islands, as cadets at the Military Acad-
emy at West Point. This action on the
part of Congress would, in my judgment,
tend to further increase the zeal and effi-
ciency of a body of troops which has
always rendered faithful and satisfactory
services.
THE; DEATH RATE: OF AMERICANS IN THE:
PHILIPPINE^ NO GRE;ATE;R THAN IN OUR
SOUTHERN CITIKS
There is always present in every pic-
ture of Philippine progress as painted by
those who have not carefully investigated
the facts a somber background of a bane-
ful climate, making it impossible for the
American or European to live in health
and strength in the islands for any length
of time. It is true that the islands are
in the tropics, and that the variations in
temperature are only about a third as
much in extent as in the temperate zone ;
but, for a tropical climate, that of the
Philippines is exceptionally comfortable
and healthful. The monsoons blow six
months from southwest across the islands
and six months from the northeast, so
that they are constantly windswept. This
makes a radical difference between the
climate of the islands and that of the low-
lands of India, for instance. The last two
decades, especially the latter, have taught
us much in respect to tropical diseases,
their causes, their proper treatment, and
the best method of avoiding them. This
was one of the most valuable results of
the Spanish war.
In his address as president of the Phil-
ippine Medical Association, in March.
1905, Dr John R. McDill, who came first
to the islands as a leading army surgeon
and who left the army to carry on a most
successful practice in Manila, said:
"We have come to esteem to the utmost
the climate which so effectually guards
many of you against the too strenuous
life and which is almost ideal eight
months in the year, even in Manila.
Our professional experience has proven
that, excepting some intestinal disorders
which we are rapidly preventing and cur-
ing and a limited amount of epidemic
infectious diseases, there is nothing un-
usual about the kind or amount of disease
encountered here, or its successful treat-
ment when hospital care is available. The
surgeon's work has fully demonstrated
that ideal wound healing and convales-
cence after operation is as much the rule
here as anywhere in the world. We
physicians also know that and appreci-
ate' that the dread diseases of childhood
so prevalent at home are rare here, and
that of all the ills, particularly among
women, from real bodily ailments to a
poor complexion, for which the climate is
usually blamed, the great majority are
hereditary or acquired, were brought
here by the patient, and often aggravated
by careless and unhygienic living. For
old people and children the climate is an
earthly Elysium. . . . With the im-
proved and constantly improving condi-
tions of living, we believe that almost all
will agree that by observing the normal
and moral life healthy Americans can
live about as long here and enjoy as good
health and do as much good and hard
work, more than three-fourths of the
year, as we could in the home land."
The death rate among American soi-
diers in the Philippines for the last year
was 8.5 per thousand, and the previous
year 8.65. General Wood reports that
the size of the sick report cannot be prop-
erly charged to the c'imate ; that, taken
TEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES
'45
as a whole, the reports for the years in-
dicate a decided improvement in health
conditions, and that the men leading the
islands after a regular tour of more than
two years present a far better appearance
than those of the incoming.
The death rate among American civil-
ians in Manila for the fiscal year ending
June 30, 1907, was 5.59 per thousand, a
reduction from the previous year. The
death rate among Filipinos this year in
Manila was 36.9 per thousand and among
Spaniards 15.84, both reductions from the
previous year.
During the decade of our stay in the
islands the conditions of life for Ameri-
cans have steadily bettered. We have be-
come acquainted with hygienic methods
of living, and the death rate of American?
of the same social condition in the Phil-
ippines is certainly not greater than in the
cities of the Southern States, and is, as
we have seen, very much less than that
among Filipinos.
WE HOPE) TO MAKE: THE: FILIPINOS LARGER
AND STRONGER PHYSICALLY
If the United States is to continue its
governmental relations with the Philip-
pines for more than a generation and its
business and social relations indefinitely,
the fact that Americans can live healthful
lives in the Philippines is important of
itself; but I have cited these statistics
and this expert opinion to show more
than this — I believe that it has an impor-
tant bearing upon another kind of pro-
gress possible among the Filipino people,
and that it opens another important field
of education for the American govern-
ment to cultivate in the islands.
No one can be in the Philippines long
without realizing that as a race the Fili-
pinos are small of stature, slight of frame
and flesh, and with small powers of re-
sistance to epidemic diseases. It has been
supposed that because of their nativity
the Filipinos were not subject to the ma-
larial, intestinal, and dysenteric troubles
that afflict Americans and Europeans, and
that measures taken to avoid or cure such
troubles in the case of the foreigner were
unnecessary and superfluous with the Fili-
pinos. Recent investigations of a system-
atic kind, carried on by keeping com-
parative statistics of all the official au-
topsies made in the islands, seem to show
that the assumption that the Filipinos
are immune from the forms of disease I
have mentioned is without foundation.
The autopsies of 100 cases showed in a
great majority the germs of malaria, of
amoebic dysentery, and that microbe of
the so-called "lazy" disease of Porto Rico
known as the "hookworm." It is true
that the diseases were not active or acute,
but their presence in the system of course
weakened the constitution of the subject
and could easily explain his anaemic con-
dition, his smallness of stature, and small
powers of resistance. Malaria, of course,
is produced or at least transmitted by the
mosquito, while amoebic dysentery and
the "lazy" disease are water-borne and
proceed directly from the miserable
sources of water supply in most Filipino
towns. Proper precautions can avoid all
these, or at least can greatly reduce the
number of victims.
In Manila, 60 per cent of all infants
born die during the first year of their
lives, and there is no reason to believe
that infant mortality in other parts of the
islands is less. This frightful percentage
is brought about by ignorance and neglect
of the mothers in feeding their babies.
There are very few, if any, milch cows in
the islands, and the little ones are fed
with all sorts of impossible things. They
die generally of a lack of nourishment.
There is no reason why, if the mothers
were correctly taught and proper infant
food were brought within the reach of the
poor, this awful rate of infant mortality
might not be reduced. Not only is there
an actual loss of life which might be
avoided, but the babies which live
through such treatment and nourishment
are not apt to make strong men and1
women, but are likely to become victims
of anaemia and other diseases mentioned^
as shown in the autopsies I have re-
ferred to.
I do not think it is unjust to the Span-
ish regime in the Philippines to say that
very little, if any, attention was paid to
146
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
sanitation according to modern methods.
In the city of Manila and in the other
large towns of the islands the American
military medical authorities, who were
the first to assume responsibility for the
health of the islands, found the same
utter disregard of the proper rules for
the disposition of house sewage that was
found in Habana. Thousands, yes, tens
of thousands, of Filipinos were carried
off year after year by a peculiarly viru-
lent type of smallpox.
In Manila, in Cebu, and in Nueva
Caceres, respectively, were leper hospit-
als, but in each the management was
inefficient and the care of the inmates
poor. More than this, no supervision
was exercised to isolate lepers not in
hospitals. Sometimes the poor creatures
were driven out of villages by popular
riots and herded together with no proper
food and no shelter. The contact of
lepers with the people of course only in-
creased the number of cases of the dread
disease.
In 1885 or 1886 the islands were visited
by an epidemic of cholera, and the pros-
tration of the people of Manila and the
Philippines, due to the rapid spread of
the scourge, beggared description. In
Manila the deaths were 1,000 or more a
day from that cause alone for a number
of weeks. The trade proximity of Ma-
nila, Iloilo, and Cebu to China, India,
Java, Burma, and the Straits Settlements
makes the danger of transmitting tropical
and other infectious diseases very much
greater.
Quarantine in Spanish times was lax.
The American Army medical authorities
took hold of the matter of sanitation in
their usual vigorous way and made much
progress in the matter of quarantine and
in correcting the glaringly unsanitary
conditions in Manila. But it remained
for the civil government to effect a thor-
ough organization of a health department
which could do permanent good.
The introduction of sanitary methods
by law among the people has given rise
to more dissatisfaction and greater criti-
cism of the government than any other
one cause. The truth is that the people
have to be educated in the effectiveness of
such methods before they can become
reconciled to them, and the work of the
health department since the beginning
of the civil government, in 1901, has been
obstructed, first, by the inertia and indif-
ference of the people in respect to the
matter, and, second, by their active re-
sistance to affirmative restraints upon
them necessary to prevent disease.
SMALLPOX AND ASIATIC CHOLERA STAMPED
OUT
The fight against smallpox has been so
successful that in the past year not a
single death from it occurred in Manila,
and in the provinces of Cavite, Batangas,
Cebu, Rizal, Bataan, La Laguna, and La
Union, where heretofore there have been
approximately 6,000 deaths per year, not
one was reported. In the few places in
other provinces where smallpox appeared
it made little headway. More than
2,000,000 vaccinations against smallpox
were performed last year, and vaccination
is being carried on so that it will reach
every inhabitant of the islands.
In 1902 Asiatic cholera appeared. The
loss the first year by reason of the meth-
ods introduced was much less than it had
been fifteen or sixteen years before, but
great difficulty was encountered in put-
ting into force the health regulations, and
a futile attempt was made to establish
quarantine between localities in the
islands. Since that time a better system
of isolation and stamping out the dis-
ease in the locality where it appeared has
been followed, and it is gratifying to
note that, although the dread disease ap-
peared each year, it was finally brought
to an end on November 27, 1906, and the
authorities now feel that the people have
been so thoroughly roused to the best
methods of treating the disease that any
local reappearance of it can be readily
suppressed.
In 1902 or 1903 the bubonic plague
appeared in the islands. This has been
suppressed by the isolation of all persons
suffering from the disease and the de-
TEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES
struction of plague-infected rats, so that
during the last year there were no cases
of bubonic plague whatever.
LEPROSY ALSO BEING ERADICATED
When the Americans first began gov-
ernment in the Philippines it was re-
ported that leprosy was so widely ex-
tended in the islands that there were
probably from 25,000 to 50,000 lepers to
be cared for. After many unsuccessful
efforts a leper colony has finally been
established at Culion, a healthful and at-
tractive island between Panay and Pala-
wan, to which all the lepers of the islands
are now being gradually removed. The
number probably does not exceed 3,000.
The course pursued is to take each prov-
ince separately and by thorough investi-
gation of the reported cases of lepers de-
termine those of true leprosy and to re-
move them thence to the colony of Cu-
lion. The experiment at first was a
doubtful one because of the objection of
the lepers to being taken so far away
from their homes, and some of the friends
of lepers made vigorous objections
to this course. After the removal of the
first 500, however, and when they found
how comfortable and agreeable life at
Culion was, the objections ceased. Lep-
rosy as a disease usually does not directly
kill its victims, but it so weakens the
powers of their resistance that the rate
of mortality from other causes among
lepers is very high. The system of iso-
lation and withdrawing lepers from the
thickly populated communities has been
at once justified by the reduction in the
number of new cases. The number of
known lepers in the archipelago on Sep-
tember i, 1905, was 3,580; on June 30,
1907, it was 2,826, a decrease of 654, due
to the death of the known lepers without
any spread of the disease, as had been the
case in previous years and under different
conditions. The policy of removal of
lepers is one which can only be carried
out gradually and has been applied onlv
to a part of the provinces, but it will
probably be completed in three or four
years, when all the lepers will be removed
to Culion. and the effect of this isolation
will certainly be to reduce the infection
of healthful persons with the awful dis-
ease to a minimum.
RAILROADS IN THE PHILIPPINES
In my last annual report I set forth in
detail the concessions granted for the
construction of railroads in Luzon,
Panay, Cebu, and Negros, and showed
that within five years we might expect
that, instead of a single line of railway
120 miles in length, which was all that we
'found when we occupied the islands, we
would have a system with a mileage of
1,000 miles. Work has gone on in full
compliance with the terms of the conces-
sions of the two companies.
Only one of these companies took ad-
vantage of the provision for the guaranty
of bonds, and they have built about 40
miles of road and have earned, under the
terms of the concession, the guaranty of
$973,000 of bonds, which has already
been signed and delivered by the Philip-
pine government. Of course, in this
financial panic these companies are likely
to have difficulty in securing investors in
their securities.
The roads as constructed have been
well constructed, and are admirably
adapted to resist the climatic conditions
in the islands. There is no reason in my
judgment why these roads, when con-
structed, should not pay a reasonable
percentage upon the investment. It is of
the utmost difficulty to secure the coming
of capital to the islands, and it would
greatly aid us if the dividends earned by
these roads were very large. In the
Orient two-thirds of the income of rail-
ways comes from passenger earnings
and one-third from freight. Of course,
the railroads are very essential to the
agricultural interests of the country and
will directly affect the amount of exports
of agricultural products, so we may
count on a steady increase in the freight
receipts from the moment of their be-
ginning operation. As I say, however,
the chief hope for profit in the railways
is in the passenger traffic.
In the three Visayas, in which the rail-
roads are to be constructed, the density of
i48
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
population is about 160 per square mile,
whereas the average population per
square mile in the United States in 1900
was but 26. The Island of Cebu has a
population of 336 per square mile, or a
greater density than Japan, France, Ger-
many, or British India. It is, therefore,
reasonable to suppose that the passenger
earnings on these railroads will be very
large.
THE: FILIPINO LABORER IMPROVING
It was anticipated that the labor prob-
lem would be a difficult one to solve in the
construction of these roads. This has
not proved to be true. The Philippine
labor has shown itself capable of in-
struction, and by proper treatment of
being made constant in its application.
Of course, the prices of labor have
largely increased, but the companies con-
structing the roads have found it wise to
increase wages, and thereby secure
greater efficiency. Even with increased
wages the cost of unit of result is less in
the Philippines in the construction of
railways than it is in the United States.
I do not hesitate to prophesy that dur-
ing the next twenty-five years a develop-
ment will take place in the agricultural
and other business of the Philippine
Islands which will be as remarkable in
its benefits to the United States and the
Philippine Islands as was the develop-
ment of Alaska during the last ten or fif-
teen years. Hope of this is not what has
actuated the government in pursuing the
policy that it has pursued in the develop-
ment of the islands, but this is as inevi-
table a result as if it had been directly
sought, and perhaps the absence of sel-
fishness in the development of the islands
is a greater assurance of profitable return
than if business exploitation by the
United States had been the chief and sole
motive. The growth in the production
of hemp and other fiber products, in
cocoanuts, in rubber and many other
tropical crops, and in peculiar manufac-
tures of the islands may be looked for-
ward to with certainty.
The city of Manila has not been given
autonomous government. It is under the
control of a municipal board of five per-
sons appointed by the central government,
and is governed, therefore, as Washington
or the City of Mexico is governed. In
the proper improvement of Manila some
six or eight millions of dollars had to be
expended, and much business experience
and foresight were required to build the
new water works and the new sewer sys-
tem, to repave the streets, to canalize the
esteros, or creeks, to organize an effective
police force and a new fire department.
It was thought that it would not be safe
to intrust the conduct of such important
business matters to a body selected by
the electorate of Manila for the first time.
The city of Manila has been well gov-
erned. Very large sums of money have
been expended in most extensive im-
provements, and not the slightest scandal
or dishonesty has been charged in any of
the city administration. It has offered a
most useful model for other municipal-
ities in the islands to follow and has lent
engineers, policemen, and firemen to
other towns to help the latter to better
organization.
There is no city in the world better
governed than Manila. The streets are
well cleaned, are well, policed, there is a
most excellent fire department, the parks
are being enlarged and improved, the
street-car system is as good as anywhere,
and with the improvements in the water
supply the sewerage system and esteros
or canals, which are now under foot and
part of which are quite near accom-
plished, the face which the Filipinos turn
toward the world in the city of Manila
will be a most pleasing one.
A BEAR HUNT IN MONTANA
BY ARTHUR ALVORD STILES
TOPOGRAPHER, U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
WITH the end of the hunting
season in the Far West there
comes to light a true and ex-
citing bear story — one that well might
have made the bravest hunter look to his
safety, or even have thrilled the sports-
man spirit of President Roosevelt himself.
The incident occurred last September
in the forest of northwestern Montana.
The party consisted of Dr Charles B.
Penrose, a well-known physician of Phil-
adelphia, the victim of bruin's ferocious
attack, and his two brothers, Spencer
Penrose, of Colorado Springs, and Sen-
ator Bois Penrose, of Pennsylvania, now
in Washington. The party had spent the
early part of the season exploring a sec-
tion of the Lewis and Clark Forest Re-
serve, where trails were to be found and
where travel with the pack-horses was
comparatively easy. Toward the end of
the summer, however, Senator Penrose
desired to see a part of the country hith-
erto unsurveyed and without trails or
passways of any kind. It is a section of
high and rugged mountain peaks, snow-
fields, and living glaciers, wholly unin-
habited except by the wild animals, and
wellnigh inaccessible save in the dead of
winter, when some adventurous soul of
doubtful judgment might make his way
thither on snowshoes.
As it happened, a small party of topo-
graphical surveyors of the U. S. Geo-
logical Survey was then penetrating into
this God-forsaken region, carrying with
them their pack-train of mules, camp
equipment, and map-making instruments.
This was the first pack outfit of any kind
to enter into the territory. Senator Pen-
rose and his brothers joined the govern-
ment party, and by them were conducted
well up among the snow-capped peaks of
the range.
Continued bad weather having stopped
the work of the surveyors and made all
mapping impossible, the writer, who was
chief of the government party, offered to
take Senator Penrose out for a hunt.
The Senator and his younger brother,
however, were tired out with the long and
difficult journey to the government camp,
so Dr Penrose, who had endured the hard
climb better than his brothers, volun-
teered to accompany me to a distant gla-
cier basin, where they expected to find
big game. The saddle horses were left
at the head of this basin, and, little know-
ing of the fate that awaited them, the two
men separated.
I had just sighted a fine buck deer and
was on the point of creeping away from
it so that Dr Penrose might come and
kill it, when I heard three shots in rapid
succession. I gave no special heed to the
reports, which came from the other side
of the ridge, and was about turning to
shoot the deer myself, when I heard two
more shots ; a moment more and another
report rang out. Immediately becoming
alarmed, I ran back in the, direction from
whence the shots came. * I suppose I
reached the doctor in about five or ten
minutes. As I came around a mass of
broken boulders I saw Dr Penrose
wandering aimlessly around in the canyon
bed. He had no gun. His hat was gone,
his coat torn off, and his trousers rent.
Blood poured from his head and neck,
and he gripped his left arm in his crim-
son right hand. When I reached him he
murmured piteously, "Water, water." I
ran and brought water in my big som-
brero from the other side of the rocks.
He drank it like a thirsty horse, and I
thought I saw part of it run out through
a gash in his cheek. Then he said :
"Stiles, I am all in ; I have had a fight
with a bear."
With signal cloth I hurriedly began to
tie up the worst of his wounds, and as I
did so the picture and the bleeding man
told me the story. A few rods down the
gulch lay a grizzly cub, so large as to ap-
pear full-grown, except to the c? refill
observer. Near by was the huge carcass
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
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A BEAR HUNT IN MONTANA
of a mother grizzly, and near her the
doctor's Mauser rifle, cast aside and
empty. All was plain now. In his ex-
citement Dr Penrose had not noted that
the bear which his first three shots had so
promptly slain was yet a young cub,
whose grief-stricken and enraged mother
might then be making her way from the
rocks and brush to avenge the death of
her offspring. Going down to examine
his prize, he placed his rifle on a rock,
fortunately not far away.
He was stooping over the dead cub
when there came from behind him a rush
and an awful cry. He turned and saw
the mother bear coming upon him, then
not sixty feet away. With almost super-
human presence of mind Dr Penrose
caught up his Mauser again and fired two
shots into the enraged beast. Instantly
he took from his pocket his last remaining
cartridge, worked it into the rifle, and sent
a third steel-jacketed bullet into the on-
rushing bear. Swift and sure as were the
little bullets, the bear's fury was not
checked in time. With one stroke of her
paw she sent him into the gulch, eight
feet below. She sprang down after him
and caught him in her mouth and shook
him as a cat might shake a mouse. She
dropped him. Again she caught him up,
his face between her glistening tusks.
She tore his scalp ; his eyes narrowly es-
caped. A tusk penetrated into his mouth
from the side of his cheek ; another tore
open his throat. There were five gaping
wounds in his chest. His thigh bore an
awful, irregular tear, and the flesh hung
in ragged pieces from the wound, half as
wide as your hand. His left wrist was
twisted and broken, and the bones stuck
out through the quivering flesh. The bear
tried once more to shake her half-dead
victim, but she sickened with her own
awful wounds, and, staggering, fell dead
at his feet.
The little Mauser bullets, fired a mo-
ment before, had finally had their deadly
effect, and by his steady nerve and ac-
curate aim Dr Penrose had saved his own
life. Had the beast lasted another half
minute the doctor would have been with
his fathers, and the little cub's death
would have been avenged. But the heroic
mother had fought to the last, and mnv.
with her dead baby, lay quiet and still
forever.
Recovering sufficiently, the bleeding
man sat up and began to take stock. As
he meditated thus, there came a new ad-
versary. In actual fact, or in the suffer-
ing man's delirous fancy — I have never
known which — a third bear bounded out
of the brush from another direction. The
doctor's heart sank; he could make no
resistance now; he hoped that death
might come quickly. The new enemy
approached to close quarters, and, walk-
ing around, snarled and growled sav-
agely, yet was evidently undecided what
to do. Then, with a cry of mingled rage
and fright, it dashed off down the gulch
and was lost in the forest.
The journey back to camp was diffi-
cult and dangerous, but the suffering doc-
tor, who now began to realize his fright-
ful condition, was bearing up bravely.
Wrapping my big cow-boy slicker around
him, I managed to get him on my horse,
and we turned back to the camp, where
we had left the Penrose party. My faith-
ful horse did his duty nobly, as we
climbed and stumbled along for two
hours without a trail, at last reaching the
teepees at nightfall. The unexpected
sight of the wounded and bleeding doctor
somewhat demoralized the group of wait-
ing men, and after some delay a pine-
knot camp-fire was made for light, and
with the patient lying at full length on the
ground I began my surgical operations,
assisted by such much-needed instruction
as the doctor, in his awful pain, could
give me while the work progressed. I
applied antiseptics and placed bandages,
all of which happily he had with him in a
small emergency case. Finally the broken
wrist was reached. It was agreed that I
should remove the protruding bones, the
nervy patient thinking he could endure
the pain of the operation without anes-
thetics. I disinfected the little knives and
appliances and the last operation began.
The pain was awful. With one agonized
groan the man gave up for the first time.
We held a hurried conference. The wrist
would have to be left as it was, and we
bound it up once more in signal cloth. It
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photos by Robert H. Chapman and H. L,. Baldwin
TYPICAL VIEWS IN NORTHWESTERN MONTANA
Showing barren and rugged peaks and heavily-forested valleys
A BEAR HUNT IN MONTANA
'S3
Photos by Robert H. Chapman and H. L- Baldwin
PACK-TRAIN CROSSING THE RANGE
View from Kootenai Mountain, looking south
'54
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
was one o'clock in the morning when I
finished my amateur surgery. Thoroughly
distracted by the sight of their brother's
suffering, Senator Penrose and Spencer
withdrew to another tent, and I lay
down near Dr Penrose to wait for dawn.
My life on the frontier has been full of
trying episodes, but oh, that night ! How
would we get Dr Penrose out of the
mountains? I dare not guess how many
times I asked myself that question. As
the gloomy hours dragged by I listened
to the heavy breathing of the man whose
nerve and fortitude I had already come to
admire, now asleep and groggy with the
morphine injected to stop his unbearable
suffering.
To go back the way we came up would
mean two days and a 6oo-foot climb on
foot. He could not last. By the second
day we would be packing out a dead
body. Yet there was no other route.
The situation was desperate. In the
lonely flickering of that camp-fire I medi-
tated, and my sympathies went out to that
wounded man. As the case presented
itself at that moment success in guiding
the party to the railroad meant the doc-
tor's life, if not his comfort ; failure meant
death, simply. Before that welcome
dawn had come I decided to run a haz-
ard. We would take Dr Penrose to the
railroad by an unheard of route. Provi-
dence might point the way.
At dawn the little caravan started.
Again the big black horse carried the
almost helpless doctor, Senator Penrose
and Spencer walking on either side to
steady their brother through the tight
places. The faithful guide, Bill Hague,
lead the extra "packs," and two young
men from the Survey party, Malcolm
Force, of Montclair, New Jersey, and
Billy Kemeys, of Washington, D. C.r
worked as axemen. Thus, for eleven
hours, we climbed down, down, down,
five miles through the forest and jungle,
cutting our way as we went. At dark we
dropped through to the railroad, com-
pletely exhausted, but safe. Our route
had proved successful. I could not have
cut another tree or broken another brush,
and my two Survey boys had stood by
me like men.
Quickly we conducted Dr Penrose to a
lonely section-house two miles down the
track, where the Great Northern Limited
was flagged, and he was taken away to
Minnesota, where, three days later, he
was operated upon by the surgeons at
the Mayo Hospital. Since then he has
retired to his country home near Phila-
delphia. Though his recovery is not yet
complete, his progress has been very re-
markable.
As a memento of the encounter with
the bear, Dr Penrose has presented the
writer with a beautiful Mauser rifle, im-
ported from the Krupp works at Essenr
Germany. In the stock of the rifle is set
a little silver nameplate which bears the
simple inscription : "Arthur Stiles, from
C. B. Penrose."
VOL. XIX, No. 3
WASHINGTON
MARCH, 1908
A JOURNEY THROUGH THE EASTERN
PORTION OF THE CONGO STATE*
BY MAJOR P. H. G. POWELL-COTTON
MY principal quest in my recent
journey to the Congo State was
the northern white rhino, known
only by a single specimen, shot by its dis-
coverer, Major Gibbons, and eventually
sent to America. My search for the ani-
mal, and for a couple of elephants stand-
ing as near 12 feet in height as possible,
occupied five and a half months. During
this time I made the Congo stations along
the Nile my headquarters for short expe-
ditions westward into the plain. All
these posts are malarious and swarm
with mosquitoes — Kiro, the most pic-
turesque of them all, being literally in-
fested. In fact, the Enclave generally
must rank among the most unhealthy dis-
tricts of Central Africa ; in one year the
•death-rate among the Europeans rose
to over 20 per cent.
On my arrival at Lado, the chief sta-
tion on the White Nile, in the latter part
of December, and throughout the first
fortnight of January (the dry season),
the heat was intense, the thermometer
standing as high as 104° in my tent at
2 p. m. Once away from the Nile, the
scarcity of water proved a great diffi-
culty. Stagnant pools in the river beds,
fouled by man and beast, and these only
at rare intervals, formed the sole supply.
In the rainy season so much of the coun-
try lies under water that traveling is
almost impossible. Owing to the flatness
of the thorn-dotted plain, Lado Hill
forms a conspicuous landmark for many
miles. This district is peopled by the
Bari, a peculiar feature of whose huts is
the floor, sunk 18 inches below the sur-
face of the ground — a method of con-
struction which appears particularly
curious in view of the heavy rainy season.
As my caravan moved farther south-
ward I was struck by the numerous
ruins of villages and almost continuous
stretches of what had once been culti-
vated ground. It was evident that at no
very distant date, probably before the
dervish raids had devastated the coun-
try, it must have supported a considerable
population. Much of the ground had
been terraced and cleared of stones. The
village sites were marked by numerous
circles, some 6 yards in diameter, formed
of wide, thin stones set upright and
standing some 18 inches to 2 feet above
the surface. The top of each of these
stones was nicked to receive the end of a
* An address to the Royal Geographical Society, and published in this Magazine through the
courtesy of the Geographical Journal (London).
iS6
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
roof-pole. Here and there a double cir-
cle of stones denoted a hut built after the
form of the modern Abyssinian tucal,
with a passage round it. Judging from
a few higher stones still standing, these
villages had evidently been surrounded
by a palisade. At the present time the
population is scanty, so that considerable
difficulty is found' in provisioning the
sta^ons. The greater part of the grain
for iry men had to be drawn from a dis-
trict several days east of the Nile, on the
Uganda side.
PRIMITIVE: BLACKSMITHS
Working southward from Rejaf, I
struck up the valley of the Kaya, where
scattered settlements of nomad Bari plied
the double trade of fishermen and black-
smiths. The women generally took their
part in the work as well as the men. In
little hollows on the flat surface of a rock,
they would pound the filbert-like nuts of
iron ore to powder. This was then car-
ried to the smelting pits near by, grass-
roofed constructions shaped like the let-
ter V and encircled in heaps of dross and
charcoal. Here and there couples of men
were hard at work forging hoes, one of
them beating the mass of glowing metal
into shape with two stones, to serve the
purpose of hammer and anvil, while his
companion plied the bellows. One of the
blacksmiths told me that the iron ore is
collected from the surface of the ground
at a place ten days distant. When the
hoes are completed they are taken over
to the great chief of the Bari tribe, on
the Uganda side, who buys them for
flour.
As the caravan drew nearer Wadelai,
I found a stretch of country which
proved to be the favorite haunt, at that
time of year, of not only white rhino, but
bull elephants. Here I was able to re-
alize the two chief objects of my visit
to the Enclave, by securing a complete
skin and skeleton of a white rhino bull
and the hides of two elephants nearly 12
feet in height. One of these latter was
destined for the British Natural History
Museum, whose director had been trying
to procure such a specimen for the last
three years. The other I proposed pre-
senting to the Tervueren Museum near
Brussels. The preservation of these
skins gave great trouble, but they were
eventually sent off in good condition to
Kampala, which place, thanks to the
courtesy of the late Mr Fowler, sub-com-
missioner Nile provinces and collector at
Hoima, they reached in excellent time.
But unfortunately, for some reason yet
to be explained, the skins were after-
wards detained so long that the lake-
shore climate completely ruined them, to
the loss of the museums and to my dis-
gust, for there was a heavy bill of car-
riage to pay. When two years previ-
ously, in 1903, I traversed the country
between Wadelai and Mahagi Bay, at .the
northwestern corner of Lake Albert, it
was practically depopulated, for the vil-
lagers had moved over to the Uganda
side, Now, to my surprise, I found new
villages being established all along the
route, the natives having returned to
escape the Uganda hut-tax.
From Mahagi Bay station we pushed
our way up the hills to Mahagi proper,
lying 4$4 hours from the lake and 1,180
feet above it. Here, as in all other sta-
tions I had visited, great improvements
were to be seen. New brick houses had
been constructed and stretches of bush
had been cleared to give place to vege-
table gardens and cultivation. My route-
now led over the Nile-Congo watershed,,
a series of rolling grass hills intersected
by running streams fringed with belts of
timber. My highest camp was at Mon-
golula, at an elevation of 5,950 feet. This
region is for the greater part very
sparsely inhabited and gives promise of
one day becoming a valuable grazing
ground for white settlers. Through
Irumu bands of natives were passing on
their way to the Kilo gold mines, where
work on the alluvial deposits has been
successfully commenced, some 35 ounces
of ^old being washed per day.
The Ituri River, a day's journey from
Irumu, forms the dividing line between
the grass land and the great forest.
When my canoe had almost crossed the
clear, rapid waters, 150 yards wide, T
A JOURNEY THROUGH THE CONGO STATE 157
MAJOR POWELL-COTTON WITH TWO OF HIS PYGMY TRACKERS
noticed on the opposite bank two minia-
ture houses built close to the edge and
resembling in every feature the huts of
the villagers. The old chief was loth to
explain the object of these houses, but at
length I was told that they were erected
for the shade of his predecessor, who was
told that he must recompense them for
their labors by guarding the passage of
those crossing the river. From that time,
whenever a caravan was seen to approach
the bank a little food would be carried
down to the ghost-houses as a warning
that the shade's protection was needed
for the caravan about to cross.
THE GREAT FOREST
The great Ituri forest, rendered fa-
mous by Stanley's remarkable journey
across it, differed greatly from the dismal
miasmic place of my imagination, where
unhealthy mists and perpetual twilight
reigned supreme. Far from shutting out
the sunshine, the lofty dome of interlaced
branches above our heads only served to
soften the pitiless heat of the equatorial
sun. Myriads of little sunbeams filtered
through the leaves, to settle on the under-
growth in bright patches of light, where
the butterflies and birds loved to flit to
and fro. In the morning, it is true, the
foliage would often be heavy with dew-
drops and gossamer, but before eight the
sunbeams had lifted the mists from the
dense undergrowth, the giant trees, and
the graceful creepers that flung their fan-
tastic coils and festoons from branch to
branch and from tree to tree. It was in
the early morning that one felt the hush
of the great forest, whose impressive
stillness was only broken by the crackling
of the sticks under the feet of our cara-
van. Here and there in the forest are
little natural glades, called by the natives
"eddos," some watered by sluggish
marshy streams that almost lose them-
selves in the rich grass, while in others
the waters rush and tumble over the clear
quartz sand-beds and among moss-grown
boulders. Dark tunnels, worn through
the undergrowth by generations of beasts
on their way to water, lead down to these
rifts in the dense vegetation ; for it is
here that the beasts of the forest, fromi
i58
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
A GROUP OF PYGMIES
elephant to the timid little dik-dik, come
down to drink, bathe, and crop the fine
grass at the water's edge.
The seasons in the forest are very ill-
defined. Generally rain falls on four or
five days of every week, while seven days
without a thunderstorm was the longest
dry period I experienced. In any big
clearing it was curious to hear a storm
coming up, for the sound of the drops
pattering on the leaves of the trees
reached us long before the rain. The
roar of a hurricane through the forest
was an experience never to be forgotten.
Our camp was nearly wrecked on one
occasion, and a passage several hundred
yards wide was cleared through the trees
for a distance of some miles. In 1905
I was in the forest from the last few
days of June to the first half of August,
while in the following year I spent from
the last week of January to the first days
of August in practically the same dis-
tricts. July of 1905, passed between
Irumu and Mawambi, was by far the
wettest month of the ten. The' following
July, however, spent between Makala,
Mawambi, and towards Beni, was one of
the driest. While the forest is damp, I
came across but very few boggy places
and no large marshes. Mosquitoes are
almost unknown.
THE DENIZENS OF THE FOREST
The population of the forest is numer-
ous, from the pygmies, considered to be
the most savage and primitive, to the
Mongwana, the followers and descend-
ants of the Arab ivory and slave dealers,
to whom a certain amount of Moslem
civilization and handicraft have been
handed down ; and dotted about at wide
intervals, the neat, well-ordered stations
of the Congo government gave evidence
of a European civilization that has
crushed Mongwana power and effectually
abolished the slave trade.
The climate of the forest seems to have
no detrimental influence on the physical
development of any of the tribes who find
their home under its shelter. The Mong-
wana are a tall, well-proportioned race of
A JOURNEY THROUGH THE CONGO STATE 159
A FOREST GIANT, WITH TENT BETWEEN TWO EMBEDDED ROOTS
men, and many of the women seem to
have inherited a certain Arab grace of
form. The Babila, another tribe with
which I came in contact, although short
of stature, are a sturdy, healthy-looking
race, while the pygmies certainly show
no signs of physical degeneration. But
the native from the plain, or the white
man, usually suffers severely after a few
months' residence in the damp atmos-
phere of the forest, rheumatism, dysen-
tery, and bilious fevers being the most
common complaints.
The soil of the forest is so rich in leaf
mold that it produces two to three crops
a year. Like the natives, the villagers are
in the habit of continually changing their
cultivation from one spot to another,
although here it necessitates a great deal
of labor. The underwood and saplings
are first all cut down, and then attention
is turned to the smaller trees, which are
felled some 8 feet from the base, and
left to cumber the ground where they
fall. By this time the underwood is suf-
ficiently dry to help in the destruction of
the larger trees that are alone left stand-
ing. Piling it around the trunks, the
natives set it alight in order to burn the
bark, and thus kill the trees, which
eventually stretch out their gaunt arms
over crops of banana, millet, rice, maize,
sweet potatoes, and manioc.
Grass in the forest can only be found
in the eddos, and in the clearings made
by the natives for their gardens. For
this reason there are no cows, and the
few imported sheep and goats that man-
age to withstand the hardships of the
march through the forest to the villages
are cherished by the owners as their most
precious possessions. Among the little
flock that followed us on our journey, the
death-rate in the forest was over 50 per
cent, and this in spite of every care.
Night after night, a platform strewn
with leaves was built for them, with a
roof as shelter, and during the march
each animal had a nose-bag with a few
potatoes in the bottom, to prevent them
getting hungry or eating poisonous leaves
from the undergrowth.
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
FLOATING VILLAGE: OF KATANGA, AS SE:E:N FROM THE: SHORE:
On the site of an abandoned garden
vegetation rapidly springs up, to form
a favorite haunt of elephant, buffalo, wild
pig, bush-buck, bongo — an animal even
rarer in the Ituri forest than the okapi—
and leopards, which latter are, curiously
enough, never to be found far from a
native settlement. In coloration the ani-
mals of the forest have a tendency to
become darker in shade than those of the
plains. A notable example of this is the
ratel (Mellivora cottoni), which is en-
tirely black, while in the south and west
of Africa the whole upper surface of the
body, head, and tail are an ashy gray.
Mica abounds in the neighborhood of
Mawambi, and the whitewash used for
the houses in the post is so full of minute
fragments that the walls sparkle in the
sunshine.
THE: PYGMIES
This station is a great center of the
pygmies. They live in small communi-
ties of six to eighteen men, with their
wives and families. Each group is gov-
erned by an elder, but there does not ap-
pear to be any recognized supreme chief,
and the communities are often at war
with one another. They have no perma-
nent villages ; their lo.w primitive huts,
thatched with the large leaf of Sarcophry-
riium arnoldianum, are built in a little
clearing in the forest, and are moved,
not only for their customary biannual
migration, or when hunting in that dis-
trict is becoming difficult, but also on the
death of any member of the group, or
also when they have killed some large
animal. It is easier, in the latter case,
to move the village to the animal than it
is to move the animal to the village.
Their time is passed in hunting and col-
lecting honey, wild fruits, and roots.
While they kill the larger animals, even
elephants at times, with a short-shafted,
broad-bladed spear, by far the greater
quantity of their game is taken by driving
it into nets.
The pygmy is a most expert climber,
and no matter how high the wild bees
may have their nest, he will scale up and
cut it out in an incredibly short space of
time. Each group of pygmies attaches
itself to the chief of one of the other for-
est tribes, whom they supply with meat.
A JOURNEY THROUGH THE CONGO STATE 161
THREE; HUTS OF THE: FLOATING VILLAGE:, KATANGA
honey, creepers as ropes, and leaves for
thatching in exchange for vegetable
produce. Tilling the ground is an occu-
pation regarded with scorn by the true
pygmy. Bows and arrows are his
weapons of war. With these he is a
skilled marksman, for he is constantly
practicing on monkeys and other small
beasts. All the ironwork used by a
pygmy is traded from other tribes. Bark
cloth dyed terra-cotta or a soft gray is
his principal manufacture, but he also
makes wooden honey-pots, pipestems,
bows and arrows, together with personal
ornaments of fur and feather, and sleep-
ing mats of skin. The dances of the
pygmies are the most interesting of any I
have seen, and are carried on with great
energy and enthusiasm for hours at a
stretch. Nearly all of them portray some
feature of a hunt, and end up with the
feast that follows its success.
A FLOATING ISLAND
Katanga was the most southerly point
we touched. This village was one of the
most curious I have ever visited. The
main group of thirty huts was built on
one huge floating platform some little
distance out on the waters of a sheltered
bay. The platform rises and falls with
the surface of the lake, being moored by
poles driven into the mud. The villagers
are a robust, well-built race, in spite of
constant intermarriage, for the men never
choose their wives from among the
women of the plains. They subsist by
hippo hunting and fishing, carrying on a
lucrative trade by the purchase of salt
from Katwi to exchange for sheep at the
southern end of the lake.
1 62 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
WALL OF BURNT CLAY SURROUNDING A VILLAGE NEAR TIMBUKTU,, AFRICA
NATIVES NEAR TIMBUKTU, IN THE VALLEY OF THE NIGER
A JOURNEY THROUGH THE CONGO STATE 163
A YOUNG GIRL, NEAR TIMBUKTU
A NATIVE HUT SHOWING BURNT CLAY WALL— SCENES IN FRENCH TERRITORY IN
THE VALLEY OF THE NIGER
164
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
GRANARY IN THE VAI^EY OF THE) NIGER
For this and the preceding four illustrations this Magazine is indebted to "La Societe d' Etudes
Coloniales de Belgique," Brussels.
IN THE VALLEY OF THE NIGER
THE French during recent years
have been sending many expedi-
tions across the Sahara Desert and have
thoroughly explored Timbuktu, formerly
the mysterious city of Africa, and
all the country round about it. They
have found there queer types of archi-
tecture and relics of a civilization which
centuries ago was very great. They have
also discovered in caves exceedingly
ancient human relics, showing that this
part of the world was inhabited during
the Stone Age by a people not unlike the
prehistoric Cliff-dwellers of this country.
But perhaps the most interesting re-
sult of these expeditions is the apparent
pro'of that the Desert of Sahara is con-
stantly growing larger by pressing south-
ward. The region along the upper Niger
and east to Lake Tchad is becoming
dryer each year, with the result that the
arid belt across Africa is widening. This
gradual desiccation resembles that occur-
ring in central Asia, and is the prin-
cipal reason for the degeneracy of the
peoples along the Niger. The NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE has in prepara-
tion a large map of Africa, which will
be sent to the members of the Society
in about two months.
MAKING BREAD
MAKING CASSAVA BREAD, SAINT VINCENT, WEST INDIES
Cassava is a native plant of tropical America, but has been extensively introduced into
Africa and other tropical countries. It grows in bush form, usually six or eight feet high,
and its roots, which grow in clusters, vary in size from a few inches to three feet long, and
sometimes weigh as much as twenty-five pounds. Cassava roots form the principal food of the
common people in tropical America. It is generally handled commercially in the form of
meal, somewhat resembling oatmeal, but is made into thin, round cakes by the natives, known
as cassava bread. The meal is exported from some parts of the West Indies to Europe, where
it is used in manufactories as starch, and is also formed into tapioca. The series of illustra-
tions of making bread, pages 165-179, are from photographs by the Keystone View Co., and
are copyrighted by them.
i66
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
MAKING TORTILLAS, SALVADOR, CENTRAL AMERICA
Tortillas are prepared from Indian corn, which is first parboiled to make it clean and
soft. The meal is then crushed into a paste with a stone rolling pin on a small stone table,
as in this picture, after which it is baked on a plate of iron or earthenware, but not enough
to brown the tortilla, which is served hot. Copyrighted by the Keystone View Co.
SELLING TORTILLAS, MEXICO
167
TORTILLA MARKET, GUADALUPK, MEXICO
One of the strange customs noticed by Americans in Mexico is that the natives are aim- st
constantly eating from morning until night. Wherever a train stops there are men, women,
and children selling boiled eggs, fried chicken, and many dishes distinctly Mexican, all gen-
erally seasoned with Chile and other acrid spices; native cakes (tortillas), perhaps prepared
and cooked at the train side, are also to be had, and there, too, may always be found the
senorita with her bottle of pulque. At the market a large portion of the purchases are for
immediate consumption ; hence, as shown in this view, women arc always present with a
handful of dough and portable charcoal stoves, supplying hot tamales and tortillas. This view
shows the tortilla-makers as they appear on Sundays and feast days in front of the Cathedral
Guadalupe. Copyrighted by the Keystone View Co.
1 68 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
A BREAD "WALLAH," J^YPORE}, INDIA
These round, flat cakes of unleavened bread are more like pancakes than any other article
of food in common use among us. The cakes are called chapatties. The cook shapes them
between his hands and bakes them on a griddle or on the coals. They are made of wheat
flour, and are a common article of diet among the well-to-do classes in central and northern
India. The poorer people eat cake made of corn meal, millet, and a coarse, hard grain called
raggy. In western India barley cakes are eaten to some extent. In the south boiled rice is
made into cakes known as hoppers, which is the Anglo-Indian rendering of the Tamil appa.
Copyrighted by the Keystone View Co.
A JAPANESE BAKERY
i 69
A BAKERY IN JAPAN
Old Japan had no bread or biscuits. Rice, beans, fish, eggs, and millet were and are the
chief articles of food. The Japanese knowledge of bread dates from their acquaintance with
the Portuguese, who first entered Japan in 1542. In 1890 there was a rage for foreign bread
in Tokyo, even among Jinrikisha men and coolies. Piles of loaves were seen at every little
cook-stall; but the fashion subsided like a fever and ordinary Japanese victuals resumed their
wonted place. Biscuits such as we see in this view are a compromise between oriental and
occidental cookery. They are of various kinds, made of rice or of wheat flour and baked over
a charcoal fire. Copyrighted by the Keystone View Co.
i jo THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
TWO WOMEN GRINDING AT THE) MILL — PALESTINE)
Wheat is sown, reaped, and ground in Palestine and Syria by the same primitive methods used
2,000 years ago. Copyrighted by the Keystone View Co.
MAKING BREAD IN SYRIA
BAKING BREAD IN SYRIA
The hearth is simply two stones raised on end, over which an iron plate is laid, on which the
bread is baked. Copyrighted by the Keystone View Co.
i 72 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
BREAD OF THE: ORIENT, EGYPT, AND TURKEY
These loaves are not of such generous size as the reader may infer. Notice a loaf to the
right, purposely crushed for this occasion. The material is first rolled out or pounded flat
like pie dough and two layers successfully united at the edges. These are then placed in a
hot oven, where they puff up and are baked in a remarkably short time. Copyrighted by the
Keystone View Co.
A CANADIAN BAKERY
173
AN OLD-FASHIONED BAKERY STILL
USED IN SECTIONS OF CANADA
STATES
AND THE UNITED
This bakery resembles the New England oven of two generations ago. A week's supply
of bread for a large farm household can be baked at one heating. Copyrighted by the Key-
stone View Co.
174
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
MAKING THE
BREAD" OF THE NORWEGIAN PEASANT
This Norwegian woman is baking the well-known flat bread under a little shelter of
dried branches. The dough for this bread is in the shallow dish in front and to the left of
the woman, and is made of coarse barley meal and water. After being rolled thin, it is
removed to the round flat stone in the foreground, under which a fire of faggots is kept
burning. Here it is baked, then laid on the pile on the opposite side of the picture. Copy-
righted by the Keystone View Co.
BREAD IN NORWAY
'75
MAKING THE: FLAT ISRKAD 01- TIIK xomvKr.iAx PEASANT
This barley bread is stored in a dry place for the winter, when it forms one of the chief
foods of the peasants. Though made in the most primitive fashion, it is usually clean and
palatable. Copyrighted by the Keystone View Co.
Photo from Corby Bros., Washington, D. C.
THE LABORATORY OF AN AMERICAN BAKERY, WHERE ALL THE INGREDIENTS ARE
CAREFULLY TESTED
MARKING THE ALASKAN
BOUNDARY
UNUSUAL difficulties are being met
and overcome in marking the
Alaskan boundary as determined by the
Boundary Tribunal at London in 1903.
The shortness of the season in which the
work can be done, the absence of all
trails, the necessity of climbing almost in-
accessible peaks, and the severe cold
practically all the time have made the
surveying of the boundary a very hard
problem. The work is, however, being
pushed vigorously by both the United
States and Canadian governments.
The illustrations on pages 180-189 will
give the reader an excellent idea of the
region in which the work is being done.
These illustrations are from photographs
by Messrs Radcliffe Hordern and E. R.
Martin, of the Alaskan Boundary Sur-
vey, and have been sent to this Magazine
through the courtesy of Hon. O. H. Titt-
mann, Alaskan Boundary Commissioner
for the United States.
Kate's Needle, whose peculiar profile
is shown on page 180, is about 10,000
feet high, and is the highest mountain in
southeastern Alaska outside of the Saint
Elias and Mount Fairweather ranges.
It is one of the boundary mountains se-
lected by the Tribunal of London.
Whichever of the pinnacles projecting
above its summit ridge is chosen as the
exact turning point in the boundary will
be a grander and more enduring monu-
ment than any which can be built by
human agency. The reader will note the
remarkable profile of a female face with
a striking head-dress.
The mountain is the source of great
glaciers lying on its slopes, and from one
of these in a most inaccessible region
this photograph was taken by Mr Rad-
cliffe Hordern, of the Alaskan Boundary
Survey. The mountain is 8 miles west of
the Stikine River and about 34 miles from
Point Roberts at the mouth of the river.
The views on pages 181-189 were all
taken by Mr Martin in the vicinity of
Glacier Bay, Alaska.
TWENTIETH CENTURY BAKING
177
3 o
- I
i i
I 1
i78
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
TWENTIETH CENTURY BAKING
180 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
MARKING THE ALASKAN BOUNDARY
181
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MARKING THE: ALASKAN BOUNDARY
Some of the difficulties of triangulation. Climbing an almost vertical cliff by a rope.
This cliff is almost 100 feet high, and affords the only means to reach the summit. The man
on the rope has a theodolite on his back. This ascent had to be made five times before the
necessary observations were completed. Photo by E. R. Martin, Alaskan Boundary Survey.
MARKING THE ALASKAN BOUNDARY
THE SURFACE OF THE "HUGH MILLER" GLACIER
No difficult}- was found in traveling at will over this glacier
TRIANGULATION PARTY RETURNING FROM A TRIP TO A STATION NEAR THE MUIR
GLACIER
This outfit spent fourteen successive hours working the boat through the floating ice.
In eight of the fourteen hours no land was visible, and part of that time the bow of the boat
was almost invisible from the stern. A dense fog covered everything, and the boat was
navigated by a pocket compass. Some of the bergs were very large, and the fact that they
break up and roll over without any apparent reason and without any warning, made this trip
extremely dangerous. Photos by E. R. Martin, Alaskan Boundary Survey.
184
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
VIEW UP QUEEN INLET TOWARD THE BOUNDARY LINE THE CARROLL GLACH-U
SHOWS IN THE BACKGROUND
The field of floating ice in front of the Mnir Glacier and small bergs left on the beach
by falling tides. The Muir Glacier formerly faced about where the group of men are seen,
and had solid frontage clear across the inlet about ico feet high. Now it is back several
miles and slopes gradually down to the water. The earthquake of 1899 probably caused the
ice to break off more rapidly than it usually did. Its former great beauty is now lost. Photos
by E. R. Martin, Alaskan Boundary Survey.
MARKING THE ALASKAN BOUNDARY
85
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1 86 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
SILK SLEEPING TENT, WEIGHT ABOUT 8 POUNDS, Q X IO, SHOWING COTS AND
SLEEPING BAGS
A TRIANGULATION PARTY EATING LUNCH ON A MOUNTAIN TOP
Not much style, but plenty of tea and substantiate. Photos by E. R. Martin, Alaskan Bound-
ary Survey
MARKING THE ALASKAN BOUNDARY
AN OBSERVING PARTY RETURNING TO CAMP FROM A TRIANGULATION STATION <>\ A
SNOW FIELD WHICH IS A LITTLE SOFT FROM THE ACTION OF THE SUN
CAMP DIVERSION
The chief of parties feeding the pet of the outfit. A triangulation station signal and cairn,
with the cook tent in the background. Photos by E. R. Martin, Alaskan Boundary Survey
i 88 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
m
SUNSET VIEWS IN JULY
These views were taken between 9.30 and 10.30 P. M. Photos by E. R. Martin, Alaskan
Boundary Survey
MARKING THE ALASKAN BOUNDARY
189
o 2_
'- I
A DROWNED EMPIRE
BY ROBERT H. CHAPMAN
THE swamp issue has recently
appeared upon the legislative
horizon as a new and rather at-
tractive proposition. Until very recently,
federal reclamation of American mo-
rasses had not been considered seriously.
The NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
last year published a general resume of
the drainage question by Mr H. M.
Wilson;* but since then the subject has
taken shape with great rapidity, until
now it looks as though we might have
within the very near future a second
reclamation act, this time for the purpose
of removing the excess water from,
rather than supplying it to, agricultural
lands.
In response to a Senate resolution, Sec-
retary Garfield has recently transmitted
to Congress an instructive reportt on the
work which the bureaus of his depart-
ment have already done in connection
with swamp and drainage matters. While
the country generally has supposed that
drainage, so far as it is related to the
work of the federal government, is a new
question, and that any information that
Congress might want with respect to
swamp lands would be forthcoming only
after much investigation, it seems these
bureaus have not only been for years
making detailed surveys and studies of
swamp lands of the United States, but the
Department of the Interior has in several
cases entered into actual drainage con-
struction of large tracts in connection
with irrigation projects.
Over twenty years ago the Geolog-
ical Survey started a special investigation
of the swamp areas of the country in the
work of the late Professor Nathaniel S.
Shaler, and his estimate of approximately
78,000,000 acres of wet lands east of the
looth meridian stands today as accurate,
* NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE for May,
1907.
t Senate Document No. 151.
probably, as any figures yet produced.
The fact, as stated in Mr Garfield's re-
port, that between seven and eight mil-
lion acres of swamps have been inciden-
tally surveyed by the Geological Survey
in connection with the general topo-
graphic survey of the United States di-
rects attention to the great value of this
class of work. One-third of the area of
the country has already been covered
topographically, and in this area where
swamps occur these maps, taken in con-
nection with the hydrographic and geo-
logic investigations of the Survey, afford
all the preliminary information required
for determining the feasibility of drain-
age projects and for planning the broad
features of construction.
The reason that greater swamp areas
have not been mapped is indicated by
the fact that since the primary purpose
of the topographic work of the Survey is
to secure a base for the geologic map of
the United States, the specific localities
chosen for topographic surveys have
naturally been those of greatest geolog-
ical and mineral importance and have not
included any great swampy regions.
Several special drainage surveys, how-
ever, are described, as, for instance, the
work in the Sacramento Valley of Cali-
fornia, where a cooperative survey is
being conducted by the state and the gov-
ernment, the Geological Survey doing the
work. In this case special maps, designed
for reclamation purposes, are being made
of the million acres of rich tule swamps,
about two-thirds of the work having been
completed. In this valley is located the
greatest combined drainage and irriga-
tion project in the United States, com-
prising a million acres of swamp and two
million acres of reclaimable arid lands.
A special drainage survey is also being
made in the upper Yazoo delta, Missis-
sippi, under cooperative arrangement be-
tween the Geological Survey and the
A DROWNED EMPIRE
191
192
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
A DROWNED EMPIRE
•93
194
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ROAD-MAKING ACROSS NEWLY RECLAIMED TRACT OF SWAMP LAND IN SACRAMENTO
VALLEY
State of Mississippi. It is probable that
construction work in this area will be un-
dertaken by the formation of a drainage
district, the fund necessary for this pur-
pose to be raised by assessment of the
land improved.
IMPORTANT PROJECT IN MINNESOTA .
In northern Minnesota a very interest-
ing problem is presented. Here the
United States owns about 2,500,000 acres
of land which the Chippewa Indians have
ceded to the government, to be held in
trust and disposed of for their own bene-
fit. Without some improvement of the
lands, however, there is little likelihood
of the Indians realizing much of any-
thing from them, since they constitute a
vast swamp, with only here and there
small patches of arable land. The set-
tlers on these isolated tracts are as com-
pletely marooned during long periods as
though located upon islets in the ocean.
So Congress has authorized the survey
of these lands with a view to determining
the feasibility of their reclamation by
drainage, and the Geological Survey has
completed the major portion of the work
and has even drawn detailed plans for the
reclamation, by draining, of one portion
of the swamp, known as the Mud Lake
district. An amendment to the Indian ap-
propriation bill has been proposed by
Representative Steenerson of Minnesota
allotting $1,000,000 for the drainage of
this district, to be expended under the
direction of the Secretary of the Interior.
Mr Garfield also directs attention to the
very considerable drainage work that is
being done by the Reclamation Service in
connection with its irrigation problems in
the West. In one instance, in the Kla-
math, Oregon-California, project, some
50,000 acres of swamp land will be re-
claimed by drainage, and under an exten-
sion of this great project there will be at
A DROWNED EMPIRE
'95
TYPE OF CONVEYOR DREDGE USED IN CHANNEL-DEEPENING
least an additional 100,000 acres drained.
The Secretary points out with commend-
able pride that in the event that Congress
should require additional surveys or
drainage construction work performed,
his department has already two fully
equipped bureaus, the Geological Survey
and the Reclamation Service, ready at any
day to extend the drainage work they
are in reality already doing, and at the
same time he calls attention to the fact
that, considered in its entirety, the drain-
age problem is not as simple a one as
many suppose. It involves the handling
of one of the most powerful forces with
which man has to cope and is a matter of
the broadest practical engineering.
The various phases of the problem may
be classified as follows:
1. Farm drainage.
2. Drainage and flood control.
3. Drainage, flood control, and naviga-
tion.
4. Tidal-flat drainage.
The first is the simplest form of the
problem — the draining of a farm or
group of farms into the nearest natural
run-off channel.
The second and third are closely re-
lated and more complex, especially in the
determination of engineering measures
whereby disastrous floods may be pre-
vented and the water uniformly distrib-
uted over low-water seasons, so that
navigable stages in the rivers may be
maintained.
The fourth comprises such lands as
may require protection from both streams
and the sea.
The preliminary engineering require-
ments in every case are in nowise dif-
ferent from those governing the irriga-
tion of arid lands, the construction of
inland waterways, the prevention of
floods, the conservation of water, or any
other important water-supply develop-
ment. Such problems all involve engi-
neering and physical factors the control
of which may extend beyond the area
immediatelv under consideration. There-
196
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
RECLAIMED SHIOCTON SWAMP, WISCONSIN A CROP SAID TO BE 2O TONS PER ACRE
fore any great project of wet land rec-
lamation is far above the plane of mere
local ditching. If such work is to be
prosecuted intelligently and purposefully,
the actual construction must be preceded
by topographic surveys, measurement of
stream flow, consideration of. necessary
capacity of channels, and other physical
studies. The actual development itself
can be carried out only by a corps of com-
petent engineers. In this connection Mr
Garfield points out the danger of ex-
tensive drainage undertakings without a
full consideration of all the factors.
Swamps are in a way natural storage
reservoirs, and they give off their waters
slowly, and if large areas are drained it
means that there will result a quicker
run-off from the drainage basin, and the
question must be considered whether the
channel capacity of the natural arteries
is sufficient to carry the increased flow,
else the improvement of one reach of a
basin may result in the overflow and de-
struction of another reach lower down.
The gauging of the streams in an area
considered for draining and the determi-
nation of their maximum carrying capac-
ity is therefore an essential part of the
preliminary investigation. The value of
figures of stream flow are much greater
when they have been continued over long
periods, and the work and records of
the Water Resources Branch of the
Geological Survey, which cover many
years past, are invaluable.
One of the preeminent factors is the
determination of the value of the re-
claimed land. The crop it will best raise
will give actual figures upon which to
base estimates, and the careful attention
which the experts of the Department of
Agriculture are giving to soil surveys has
a most valuable application to the subject.
An item for primary consideration is
the maintenance and extension of the
navigable waterways, which are directly
under the control of the engineers of the
U. S. Army.
The amount of work to be done is
A DROWNED EMPIRE
197
L
DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED IN SURVEY OF SACRAMENTO VALLEY (u. S. GEOLOGICAL
SURVEY PARTY)
ufficient to keep the several branches of
the government each hard at work on
the Senate in the near future. What its
fate will be in the House remains to be
the particular problem it is best fitted to seen. It is believed that the majority of
do, and calls for the most earnest and
hearty cooperation of all.
PUBLIC DEMAND FOR NATIONAL DRAINAGE
The apparent popularity of the national
drainage issue is evidenced by the large
number of bills that have been introduced
in Congress at this session, while very
substantial progress has been made in the
way of proposed legislation. The Senate
the members of that busy body favor
national drainage enactment, but it is a
question whether the bill will be allowed
to come to a vote.
The provisions of the bill are in the
main as follows :
The proceeds from the sale of public
lands in the non-arid public-land states
(those not contributing to the national
irrigation fund) are appropriated as a
Committee on Public Lands has consid- "drainage" fund, dating back to June
ered and digested the various bills and 30, 1901. in order to give drainage an
has unanimously reported to the Senate, even start with irrigation. The work of
with favorable recommendations, a com- drainage reclamation is to be carried out
prehensive measure. It is predicted by by the Secretary of the Interior, who is
the author of the bill, Senator Flint, of given wide discretion in the premises;
California, that it will undoubtedly pass among other features, he is empowered to
ig8 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
- *»
MINNESOTA SWAMP SURVEY (u. S. GKOLOGICAL SURVEY PARTY EN ROUTE)
HAND-DITCHING BY CONTRACT LABOR, HOLBECK^S SWAMP, NEAR CHARLESTON, S. C.
A DROWNED EMPIRE
99
subdivide the reclaimed tracts into
farm units of from 5 to 1 60 acres.
It is now recognized that the mini-
mum unit of 40 acres, under the
irrigation act, is, under certain
conditions of great fertility and
productivity of soil, far in excess
of what constitutes an adequate
area for a farm home, where a
man may make a comfortable liv-
ing for himself and family. The
cost of the drainage construction is
to be charged against the land re-
claimed, as under the irrigation
act, and is to be repaid into the
drainage fund in not to exceed ten
annual installments. To secure
this repayment the government is
to have a first and paramount lien
on the land. Where other than
public lands are reclaimed the loan
of the money from the drainage
fund is to be upon the bonds of
the state, the municipality, or
drainage district and secured by
lien on the lands. There is to be
no commutation of homesteads in
case of the reclamation of public
lands.
The bill is thus seen to closely
follow the general principles un-
derlying the irrigation act — the
money is obtained from the sale of
government lands, so that the ap-
propriation is automatic ; the fund,
through the return to it of the cost
of construction by the land-own-
ers, becomes a revolving one, and
most of the details of execution
are left to the Secretary of the In-
terior.
Under this measure national drainage
would begin existence with not less than
six million dollars, the receipts from the
sales of lands in the states included under
it having been from 1901 to June 30
T907, $5,813,258. Since the Secretary
of the Interior is not restricted in making
requirements for the repayment of the
cost of construction, it is probable that in
such cheap reclamation work as is esti-
mated for in the Mud Lake district,
where the cost will be less than $3 per
acre, he will provide for the repayment
to the fund in a shorter period than the
TOPOGRAPHER AT WORK IN TULE SWAMP OF SACRA-
MENTO VALLEY, CALIFORNIA
maximum 10 years. In this event the
money would be available for a second
use in possibly five years from the com-
pletion of the project and settlement ol
the land.
To save a person from drowning calls
for more or less heroism in every case.
To win from the realm of the powerfu)
Water King a flooded and perishing em-
pire as large as that of Great Britain and
Ireland, and so furnish homes for men,
women, and children, requires careful
study, intelligent direction, and unceasing
labor.
HAITI: A DEGENERATING ISLAND
The Story of its Past Grandeur and Present Decay
BY REAR ADMIRAL COLBY M. CHESTER, U. S. NAVY
GEOGRAPHICALLY, the Island
of Haiti, including within its
limits the two republics of
Santo Domingo and Haiti, is in the class
of the most favored of nations. Situated
on the Western Continent about midway
between its two grand divisions of North
and South America and abounding in
natural resources, it might be an em-
porium for each, if its inhabitants were
of as high an order as the country itself.
The general sailing directions for ships
bound from New York to almost any part
of the Greater Antilles, or to the north
coast of South America, require a course
to be steered due south on the seventy-
fourth meridian of longitude, which
passes Watlings Island, the San Sal-
vador of Columbus, close aboard, and
leads into the Caribbean Sea between
the islands of Cuba and Haiti ; thence
a slight change of course to the westward
takes the ship to the future entrance of
the Pacific Ocean — the Panama Canal.
Thus, ships from our own metropolis
visiting the neighboring ports, in which
we are most interested, will pass close
to the "Gem of the Antilles."
The name Haiti, or "High Island,"
is significant of the character of its topog-
raphy. "Sire," once said a British ad-
miral to his king, George the Third,
when asked about the island, "Haiti looks
like that," and he crumpled up a piece
of paper and placed it upon the table.
A brief description though this may be,
it well fitted the case. The island is about
400 miles long, 150 miles wide, and is
about the size of the State of New York.
It is irregular in shape and is intersected
by three chains of mountains.
Haiti has a climate peculiar to itself.
While it is dominated by the usual hot
and dry seasons of the tropics, some of
its high peaks, which extend nearly up
into the snow limits of the atmosphere,
seem to draw from the trade winds
which sweep across their summits the
moisture, which is precipitated almost
daily for a short time, and thus the dry
season is robbed of its drought-affect-
ing proclivities.
THE ORIGINAL SKAT OF PARADISE
Only one opinion seems to exist in
the minds of historians concerning the
general salubrity of the climate, the
productiveness of the soil, and the
beauty of the scenery of this remark-
able island. "In the delightful vales,"
says Raynal, "all the sweets of spring
are enjoyed without winter or summer.
There are but two seasons of the year
and they are equally fine. The ground,
always laden with fruit and covered
with flowers, realizes the delights and
riches of poetical description. Wher-
ever we turn our eyes we are enchanted
with a variety of objects colored and re-
flected by the clearest light. The air is
temperate in the daytime and the nights
are constantly cool." Naturally this ac-
count refers particularly to places on
the island where foreigners are wont to
congregate, but it also accords well
with my own experience there.
The memory of a night spent in the
hills above Port-au-Prince, where this
description strictly applies, is fre-
quently in my mind. Here, after a night
of rest, the new day began with a swim
in a beautiful pool of mountain water
which ran through the lower part of
our host's house ; and this, accompanied
by gentle breezes wafting sweet odors
and mingling with the song of birds,
*An address to the National Geographic Society.
HAITI: A DEGENERATING ISLAND
201
made the place enchanting. As I gazed
upon the beauty of the picture pre-
sented to me, I could well understand
Columbus' enthusiasm and boast that
he had discovered the original seat of
Paradise.
Historically, Haiti, or Santo Domingo,
is the senior of our own country, if we
leave out of consideration the legend-
ary reports concerning the visits of the
Norsemen to our northern coasts 800
years ago, and we are somewhat in-
debted to this beautiful island for our
own development.
It appears providential that Colum-
bus should have been led to this Eldo-
rado of his day to make his first settle-
ment, when so many other localities
seemed to be the pole to which his com-
pass pointed, for here he met a less
warlike people than he would have
found in the north, and the latter might
have blotted out of existence the spark
of exploration which was started by
this first expedition to the New World.
We know that the dread of cold
weather was primarily responsible for
his abrupt change of course to the
southward, although the glittering
prospect of gold which the aborigines
led him to believe might exist in the
larger islands to the southward had its
marked influence on his selection of a
route to follow. But Columbus' own
brief account of his voyage, as given in
his letter to his friend and patron, Luis
de vSantangel, dated February 15, 1493,
explains so well his reasons for his
abrupt change of course from the west
to the eastward again, and also gives
such a fine description of the land he
found, that I shall quote a portion of it
here :
COLUMBUS' SPANISH LETTER TO LUIS DE
SANTANGEL
"Sm: As I know you will have pleas-
ure of the great victory which our Lord
hath given me in my voyage, I write you
this, by which you shall know that in
thirty-three days I passed over to the
Indies with the fleet which the most illus-
trious King and Queen, our Lords, gave
me, where I found very many islands
peopled with inhabitants without num-
ber. And, on them all, I have taken pos-
session for their Highnesses, with procla-
mation and the royal standard displayed ;
and I was not gainsaid. On the first
which I found I put the name of Saint
Salvador, in commemoration of His High
Majesty who marvelously hath given all
this ; the Indians call it Guanahani. The
second I named the Island of Santa Maria
de Conception, the third Ferrandina, the
fourth Isabela, the fifth Isla Juana; and
so for each one a new name. When I
reached Juana (Cuba) I followed its
coast westwardly and found it so large
that I thought it might be the mainland
province of Cathay. ... At the end
of many leagues, seeing that there was no
change, and that the coast was bearing me
northwards, whereunto my desire was
contrary, since the winter was also con-
fronting' us, I formed the purpose of
making from thence to the south, and as
the wind was also against mer I deter-
mined not to wait for other weather and
turned back as far as a port agreed upon
(probably Gibara). . . .
"I understood sufficiently from other
Indians whom I had already taken that
this land, in its continuousness was an
island ; . . . from its headland I saw
another island to the east eighteen leagues
distant from this, to which I at once gave
the name La Spafiola. And I proceeded
thither and followed the north coast, as
with La Juana, eastwardly for a hundred
and seventy-eight great leagues in a
direct easterly course, as with La Juana.
The which, and all the others, are most
strong to an excessive degree and this
extremely so."
HAITI AS COLUMBUS SAW IT
The route as described by Columbus
seems then to have led him away from
the western course, and he thus stumbles
almost on the finest island of the group
into which he had entered. His letter,
continuing, tells of his first impression of
the beautiful island ; and as he found it,
202 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
so may we see it today, if we shut out
the black picture which is the product of
his countrymen's avarice.
"In it" (Haiti), he says, "there are
many havens on the seacoast, incompar-
able with any others I know in Christen-
dom, and plenty of rivers so good and
great that it is a marvel. The lands there
are high, and in it are very many ranges
of hills and most lofty mountains incom-
parably beyond the Island of Centrefrei
(or Teneriffe) ; all most beautiful in a
thousand shapes and all accessible, and
full of trees of a thousand kinds, so lofty
that they seem to reach the sky. And I
am assured that they never lose their
foliage, as may be imagined, since I saw
them as green and as beautiful as they
are in Spain in May and some of them
were in flower, some in fruit, some in
another stage, according to their kind.
And the nightingale was singing, and
other birds of a thousand sorts, in the
month of November, round about the
way I was going. There are palm trees
of six or eight species, wondrous to see
for their beautiful variety ; but so are the
other trees and fruits and plants therein.
There are wonderful pine groves and
very large plains of verdure, and there is
honey and many kinds of birds, and many
mines in the earth ; and there is a popula-
tion of incalculable number. Espanola
is a marvel ; the mountains and hills, and
plains, and fields, and the soil, so beauti-
ful and rich for planting and sowing, for
breeding cattle of all sorts, for building
of towns and villages. There could be
no believing, without seeing, such har-
bors as are here, as well as the many and
great rivers and excellent waters, most of
which contain gold. In the trees and
fruits and plants, there are greater diver-
sities from those of Juana (Cuba). In
this there are many spiceries and great
mines of gold and other metals. The
people of this island and all others that
I have seen, or not seen, all go naked,
men and women, just as their mothers
bring them forth." . . .
THE: LAUGHING NATIVES LONG SINCE)
EXTERMINATED
The tribute which Columbus pays to
the natives in continuing his narrative
would satisfy even Bellamy's ideals as ex-
pressed in his "Looking Backward." I
should like to quote all of his letter for
the benefit of those who have not been
so fortunate as to read it, but space does
not permit. A paragraph or two will
give the gist of his ideas.
"It seems to me," he says, "that in all
those islands the men are content with a
single wife. . . . Nor have I been
able to learn whether they hold personal
property, for it seemed to me that what-
ever one had, they all took share of, espe-
cially of eatable things. ... I have
not found any monstrous men, but, on
the contrary, all the people are very
comely ; nor are they black like those in
Guinea, but have flowing hair; and they
are not begotten where there is an ex-
cessive violence of the sun. Of anything
they have, if it be asked, they never say
no, but do rather invite the person to
accept it, and show as much lovingness as
though they would give their hearts.
And they know no sect or idolatry, save
that they all believe that power and good-
ness are in the sky, and they believe very
firmly that these ships and crews come
from the sky ; and this comes not because
they are ignorant; on the contrary, they
are men of very subtle wit, who navigate
all these seas and who give a marvelously
good account of everything."
We do not wonder when reading his
full description that he called this spot
the Garden of Eden. Would that we
could look on the inhabitants of this beau-
tiful island now as Columbus depicted it ;
but, alas ! since his time a sad change has
gradually crept over the island, so that
now foreigners shun it as they do a pesti-
lence.
In reading the history of its people
since the extinction of the aborigines our
hearts sicken and we are appalled by the
revelations there disclosed.
Its pages are black with the marks of
HAITI: A DEGENERATING ISLAND
203
blood shed and crime committed, not
alone by the ignorant and superstitious,
but more especially by those of intelli-
gence and education, and even our own
race is not altogether blameless or want-
ing in responsibility for this condition of
things.
On Saint Nicholas Day (December 6),
1492, Columbus entered a port at the ex-
treme west end of the Island of Santo
Domingo or, as the whole island was
then called by the aborigines, Haiti. The
natives themselves called the port Bohio,
but Columbus christened it, in honor of
the day he was celebrating, Port Saint
Nicholas, the name still existing as Saint
Nicholas Mole. This date will ever be
memorable in the annals of the Haitiens
as marking the beginning of the history
of the island.
Columbus now called the island His-
paniola in honor of the country which
had sent him forth to discover it, and it
is to be regretted that this name given by
the immortal discoverer has been lost,
for its present two names are conflicting
and confusing.
The small squadron which formed
Columbus' expedition to the New World
had come the whole distance across the
ocean intact, but off the coast of Cuba
the captain of the ship Pinta deserted
with his ship and left him only the flag-
ship Santa Maria and the small Nina to
continue the voyage. Speeding on as
rapidly as the difficult navigation would
permit, the two ships came to anchor off
a small village now known as Port de
Paix, which was so beautiful a spot that
he called it the Vale of Paradise. Here
Columbus opened communication with
the Indian King or Cacique Guacanagari,
who ruled one of the five principal
divisions of the island and who sent him
presents of gold and assured him that
more could be found farther to the east-
ward. Columbus had no doubt at this
time that he had reached the Asiatic con-
tinent, and he was anxious to return and
report his good fortune to his king and
queen. But unfortunately soon after
leaving Port de Paix his flag-ship, the
Santa Maria, drifted upon a shoal and be-
came a total wreck.
THE FIRST SETTLEMENT IN THE NEW
WORLD
As the better part of his force was em-
barked on board this ship, his position
was most precarious, and he was forced
to at once build a fort on shore and leave
in it a large portion of his men for a
garrison.
The wreck occurred near the present
port of Cape Haitien, on Christmas eve,
1492. The hospitable natives lent willing
hands, and Columbus soon had the fort
constructed from the salvage of his ship
near a village then called Guarico. This
he named the Fortress of Navidad; and
this was the first structure built in Amer-
ica. Soon after the fort was completed
he left it with a garrison of 30 men and,
proceeding to the eastward, he was for-
tunate to again fall in with the Pinta,
which vessel had deserted him in Cuba,
and in company with that ship he re-
turned to Spain to make his report.
His grateful sovereigns soon fitted him
out again with a force of 17 ships and
several hundred men to carry on his ex-
plorations from Fort Navidad, and
among those who enlisted for the voyage
were a large number of his wealthy
countrymen, who cast in their lot and
their fortunes with him in order to gain
a share of the golden prize which the
Admiral assured them was within their
grasp. But, as is usual where avarice is
the ruling spirit, troubles grew faster
than riches. His first great misfortune
after his return was to find that all of
the garrison he had left at Navidad had
been slain by the natives of the interior,
notwithstanding his good friend Gua-
canagari had defended them with such
gallantry as to produce the almost entire
destruction of his own people.
Columbus then determined to build a
permanent settlement, and after recon-
noitering he selected for this purpose a
site on an elevated plain near a spacious
bay on the north coast of the island.
Here was established the first town in
204
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
the New World, which was dignified by
the name of his queen and patron,
Isabella.
The position of the town had the only
advantage of being contiguous to the gold
country, which was the real objective of
the party; consequently the center of ac-
tivities was soon transferred to other
parts of the island, and Isabella became
only a name with a few ruins to show
from whence the first expedition into the
interior had started.
Leaving a small force at Isabella,
Columbus set out for the gold fields in
the interior which he had been led to be-
lieve existed there. Passing up the
banks of the river Bijo-Bonico, he
crossed the mountains through a pass
which he called El Puerto de los Hidal-
gos, or ''Gentlemen's Pass," in honor of
the gentlemen who composed his party.
Here opened out the beautiful Yaqui
Valley, through which flows the river to
which he gave the name of the Rio del
Oro, or River of Gold. The valley he
called Vega Real, or Royal Valley, as it
was the most beautiful he had ever seen.
The natives, resenting the intrusion of
the foreigners, swarmed in great num-
bers to contest their passage into the gold
fields ; but the unarmed hosts of the island
were no match for the disciplined troops
of Spain, and they were overcome and
slaughtered in great numbers. A fort-
ress was established on the Janico River,
called Saint Tomas, which the natives at-
tempted to take with such disastrous re-
sults that they gave up for a time all
further resistance to the conquerors.
Columbus was now fully satisfied that he
had reached the Cipango of the East
Indies, for which place he had originally
set out.
AN UNHAPPY MARRIAGE
But the course of empire was still
south, and soon Santo Domingo City be-
came the center of the colonial activities.
A little love affair connected with the
growth of this city is interesting in this
connection. One of the Spanish party,
Miguel Dias, having gotten into difficulty
with an officer, severely wounding him in
combat, fled to escape punishment. Find-
ing shelter in an Indian village and being
received with much cordiality and hospi-
tality, he in return gave his heart to the
young Caguisas, who was then govern-
ing the tribe. His protestations met with
favor, and the young Spaniard soon
found himself the consort of a queen of
no mean accomplishments. But he soon
wearied of his environment and sighed
for his old companions. The queen,
seeing his discontent and fearing to lose
him, gave him the secret of her vast
wealth and, loading him with the precious
metal, sent him back to the Spaniards to
induce them to return with him and settle
in her country. Dias delivered this mes-
sage to Columbus, who immediately
ordered an exploration of that part of
the island to ascertain the truth of the
Spaniard's report.
The sequel to this little love affair is
also interesting, but most pathetic. Zam-
caca, after giving her all to her lover,
who was thereby promoted to high honors
in the colony, being the first alcalde of the
new city, was so disheartened by the cruel
treatment accorded her people that she
fled from civilization and affluence to the
wilds of the forests, leaving her two
children and still faithful husband to
mourn her loss, and was never heard
from again.
From this origin, so casual and domes-
tic, arose the first permanent city of the
New World.
Thus the Spaniards were drawn to the
south of the island, where they built a
fort called New Isabella, and Columbus,
who was about to return to Spain, was
so impressed by the glowing accounts of
the section given him by his men that he
ordered his brother, Don Bartholomew,
to select a site and build a town. A place
was chosen on the banks of the Ozamas
River, and here arose the first permanent
city of the New World, which was named
Santo Domingo, after Columbus' father.
Soon after the Great Admiral took his
departure for Spain, discord became rife
among his subjects, and, this eventually
HAITI: A DEGENERATING ISLAND
205
developing into open mutiny, there was
inaugurated a rebellion against the pow-
ers that be which, repeated from time to
time, has made up the principal history of
the island to this day.
THE OLD SPLENDOR OF SANTO DOMINGO
In a short time the city of Santo Do-
mingo became one of great importance,
and is described as not inferior to any in
Spain. When at last Don Diego Colum-
bus, to whom the great discoverer, now
dead, bequeathed his rights as well as his
perplexities, became the ruler of the
province, he set up a court which vied in
splendor and magnificence with that of
the king himself. Diego's ambition was
to build such a capital here as would cor-
respond in greatness to the New World
his father had discovered and to the fame
and dignity of his family. The court of his
young and beautiful queen was thronged
by a circle of attendants from her own
class in Spain which professed to be the
best blood of Castile. Magnificent public
buildings were erected, the cathedral was
highly endowed and built with artistic
taste, while the monasteries were made
monuments to the Christian sentiment of
the foreigners.
The richness and abundance of gold
found in the rivers of the island at first
brought great wealth to the Spaniards;
but it was soon recognized that cultiva-
tion of the soil was of more value than
the mines, which could only be profitably
worked with the means then extant as
long as the gold was found on the sur-
face, and hence agriculture became the
principal industry of the islanders. But
the gentlemen from Spain were too proud
to labor themselves, and being anxious to
gain fortunes in a short time, they drove
the Indians beyond their strength, and
they died in rapidly increasing numbers.
Thus was killed the goose which laid the
golden egg, for without the laborers the
masters became land poor. The old feel-
ing of sedition and discontent still exist-
ing in the hearts of the colonists, together
with the loss of labor, soon produced a
condition of things that was most un-
promising for the future welfare of the
colony.
^ King Ferdinand, at first jealous of the
Columbian dynasty and the rising im-
portance of Hispaniola, now began to
realize but little on his investment, and he
soon lost interest in the administration of
the colony and devoted his attention to
the discoveries in other parts of the Xew
World.
^ The most redeeming feature in the
Spanish control of Hispaniola was the
struggle of Las Casas, the celebrated
bishop of Chiapa, to save the natives, to
whom the island rightfully belonged,
from the utter annihilation to which the
brutal system of slavery inaugurated by
his countrymen was fast driving them.
In his vain endeavor to alleviate the suf-
ferings of the aborigines he went even so
far as to be credited with introducing into
the island the inhabitants of Africa, who
had become objects of barter between the
Portuguese and other European states,
and thus was established the slave trade
in America — a curse that was quite as
injurious to the well being of the island
as the one he endeavored to overcome.
RIVALRY OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE FOR
HAITI
The history of Santo Domingo during
the 1 6th century can hardly be given
here, even if it were sufficiently important
to warrant its repetition. Suffice it to
say that the destruction of the aborigines
was now complete and the colony rapidly
degenerated in wealth, but the power rep-
resented in the control of all the colonies
belonging to Spain became the envy of
her European sisters.
In the early part of the I7th century
the English and French combined to se-
cure a portion of the growing wealth of
the New World, and this resulted in es-
tablishing in 1630, on the neighboring
Island of Tortuga, a band of robbers
which carried on piratical operations in
its worst form. Then, becoming more
powerful, they began depredations on
Hispaniola, finding that hunting its vast
and verdant fields, which abounded in
206
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
cattle, to be more remunerative than cut-
ting the throats of their victims on the
;sea.
The discord that naturally followed this
copartnership eventually resulted in the
French buccaneers gaining the mastery
over their British allies, forcing the latter
to take up their abode on the Island of
Jamaica, and thus leaving the French in
possession of the Island of Tobago, and
naturally the northern coast of Santo
Domingo also came under French juris-
diction.
AN UNDESIRABLE
From now on the French in the west
and Spanish people in the east wrestled in
almost continuous strife for the mastery
of Santo Domingo, thereby checking for
a while the progress of the island and
disposing the inhabitants to laziness and
vice. It should be noted that, unlike the
American continental emigrants, the
West Indian voyagers went forth to
seek gold only and had no thought of
making permanent settlements. They
therefore left behind them their sweet-
hearts and wives, to whom they expected
to return, and in order to increase the
value of the French possessions there
were introduced into the island at this
time a class of women who were but
little better than the buccaneers them-
selves. The mingling of the blood of this
refuse of European civilization gave to
their descendants characters as low as can
exist in human nature, and to this fact
is largely due the present condition of the
people here.
In 1776 the line of clemarkation be-
tween the French and Spanish portions of
the island was defined practically as it
exists today. After this settlement of
the boundary question the different colo-
nies became more friendly and business
between them increased, until finally, by
the treaty of Bole, signed July 22, 1795,
France came into possession of the whole
island ; but the formal abandonment of
the Spanish government of its control
did not take place until January 27, 1801.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HAITI AND
SANTO DOMINGO
Although the whole island was now
under French rule, the two parts, east and
west, were irremediably separated by the
interests of the different races. In the
eastern section the foreigners were in
numbers about as one to four of the
negroes ; in the western section of the
island the proportion of the blacks to
whites was much larger — at least 15 to
i. This disproportion of numbers in the
races accounts for the continued domina-
tion of the whites in the east, while the
western portion of the island later became
the Black Republic.
Following the French supremacy, Haiti
proper rapidly rose in the scale of pros-
perity, becoming the principal colonial
gem in the French crown; but its prog-
ress was founded upon an insecure base
and a fall was inevitable. It is said that
fourteen hundred vessels were employed
in its trade, which was about two-thirds
of the whole external commerce of
France.
Among the mulattoes, or free men of
color, were many of intellect and refine-
ment, who had been well educated in
France, such as Rigaud, Baurais, Petion,
Borgella, and Dumas, the father of the
celebrated novelist, and although they
were few in number, such men aspired to
a legal and civil equality with the whites,
and in striving for this they naturally felt
little sympathy with the slave population
and refused to connect themselves with
them until too late. To harmonize all the
conflicting interests of this mixture of
races was beyond the capacity of the
colonial government.
When the French Revolution finally
broke out in France, throwing the whole
of Europe in consternation, it found the
French colonists quite ripe for a similar
outbreak. About eight hundred of the
mulattoes in Haiti had enlisted under the
name of the Royal Chasseurs and ac-
companied Count d'Estaing in his expe-
dition to Savannah during the war of the
American Revolution, taking part in our
HAITI: A DEGENERATING ISLAND
207
CATHEDRAL AND UNION CLUB, CAPE HAITIAN
208
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
HAITI: A DEGENERATING ISLAND
209
own struggle for freedom, which
strengthened the desire of the Haitiens to
secure their own independence. Follow-
ing the example thus set by both France
and America, there broke out that fierce
strife known as "The Horrors of the
Negro Insurrection in Santo Domingo,"
which has so darkened the pages of his-
tory.
It should not be forgotten, however,
that the fearful cruelties practiced during
this insurrection were equally shared by
both black and white, all parties seeming
to vie with each other in the excess of
atrocities. Unlike their continental
friends, who were generally actuated by
a common impulse, the interests of the
islanders were hopelessly divided. The
population consisted at this time of about
30,000 whites, mostly planters, who had
been made wealthy by the labor of the
slaves ; but they were separated into irrec-
oncilable factions. Second, there were,
about the same number of mulattoes,
many of them property-owners, whose
social, industrial, and legal rights had
been restricted to a humiliating degree
by the Royalists. Third, there were
nearly 500,000 black slaves, who were
groaning silently under a cruel form of
bondage which they sought to shake off.
TOUSSAINT I/OUVKRTURE;
Soon after war broke out there ap-
peared upon the scene of activities that
wonderful character, Toussaint L'Ouver-
ture, who wrested the command of the
army from his superiors, Francois and
Baisson, and as a French general finally
led the troops to victory.
At first Toussaint was appointed a
surgeon to the army, as he had some
knowledge of simple medicines, which
had given him great influence on his mas-
ter's estate, and he used this knowledge
for the benefit of the insurgent forces to
good advantage.
This genius, as he may properly be
styled, was a slave, at first known as
Toussaint Bieda, from the name of his
master's estate, and later as Toussaint
L'Ouverture, by which he is known in
history, owing to the fact that he had
overturned the government.
He was born about 1746, of negro
parents, his father being an imported
African and, as stated by tradition, the
son of a chief. Delicate as a child, the
nickname of Fatras-Baton, or "Little
Lath," as it has been translated, was
given him. Although small and insig-
nificant in person when young, he later
became possessed of great strength and
endurance. He had received in youth
some education from a brother slave, and
knew how to read and write and speak
the French language as well as the Creole
patois, and it is said had some knowledge
of drawing. He was fifty years old at
the time of the insurrection.
This really remarkable man, who, con-
sidering his education and environments,
has not been inaptly compared to Wash-
ington and Napoleon, was now to find
himself the master of the island. Be-
loved to the point of enthusiasm by the
negroes, who had raised him to the dig-
nity he enjoyed, he was honored and re-
spected by public representatives of other
nations writh whom he had dealings.
When there was a lull in the strife
which gave him relief from military cares,
he devoted his whole time to the arts of
peace, and the policy of his whole admin-
istration was characterized by the same
sagacity and prudence which had distin-
guished his exploits in the field. He re-
stored the planters to their estates and
pushed forward the cultivation of the
soil, realizing, as does Booker Washing-
ton, the negro chieftan in the United
States, that the salvation of his people
was occupation for mind and body, and
that the land was given them as a talent
from which they must earn a living.
As the ancient colonial government
was now at an end and all official inter-
course with France cut off, Toussaint
promulgated a new constitution, which
recognized the equality of the races and
as much freedom of trade as possible. A
governor was to be named for five years,
but on account of the eminent services of
Toussaint, he was to occupy the post for
2io THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
life, with the power to name a successor.
This proclamation was made in due form
in 1801.
He decreed that slavery should be for-
ever abolished, and at the same time the
planters were by law required to give a
fifth part of the crops in payment for the
labor of the freed slaves, and at the same
time the negroes were compelled to labor
for their sustenance. To carry this
scheme into practical operation was a no
less difficult task for him than for the
negroes, but the ex-slaves were, with
few exceptions, contented and happy.
Though the Spanish colony had been
formally ceded to France in 1795, and
different posts had in consequence been
actually occupied by the Republican
troops, yet the city of Santo Domingo,
the capital of the eastern part of the
island, still remained in the hands of the
Spaniards. To obtain possession of the
capital and to establish such regulations
as might be required on its change of
government, Toussaint made a trip
through the whole island for this purpose,
which was in reality a triumphal march
after his great victories in the field. The
end of the year 1801 found every part of
Santo Domingo in quiet submission to the
negro chief and rapidly improving in
wealth and happiness under his wise ad-
ministration. With the aid of the whites,
whom Toussaint was anxious to befriend,
agriculture was beginning to improve;
the finances were getting in order, and
the government was being wisely and
regularly administered. This prosper-
ity, however, was soon to be interrupted
by calamities as serious as any which had
ever visited the ill-fated island.
CAPTURE OF TOUSSAINT I/OUVERTURE BY
TREACHERY
War having ceased between Great
Britain and France in October, 1801, the
French navy, which had not for several
years been able to leave its ports without
fear of capture, was once more free, and
Bonaparte determined to recapture Santo
Domingo. Although Toussaint had in no
way separated the colony from the
mother country, Napoleon became sus-
picious of the black general's ambition
and, fearing lest his principal colony
should slip away from him, he was in-
duced to listen to the strong appeals of
the planters whose estates had been
ruined by the negro insurrection, who
insisted that they could not be restored
unless slavery was again resumed. To
counteract the growing tendency of the
islanders to free themselves from his
control, as well as to offset any possi-
bilities of his everlasting enemy, England,
reaping benefit from an alliance with the
new country if left to act for itself, Na-
poleon planned and fitted out the famous
expedition of 1802 to bring the colony
again under subjection. His brother-in-
law, General Leclerc, was given an im-
posing force of 30,000 men, reinforced,
it is said, from time to time up to 55,000.
The general embarked and with his naval
convoy proceeded to Cape Haitien, where
he arrived on the I2th of February of
that year. There can be no doubt that
the avowed object of the expedition was
to restore slavery, although this object
was disguised by kindly and friendly let-
ters to Toussaint, such as Napoleon knew
so well how to write.
It is not intended to go into the history
of this fatal attempt on the part of the
French government to reenslave its sub-
jects— a history that is characterized by
unspeakable atrocities on the part of the
French, who set an example that was
speedily followed in retaliation by the
negroes. Toussaint, assisted by his two
principal chiefs, Christophe and Dessa-
lines, fought with the bravery of desper-
ation ; but they were at last overcome, not
by battle, but by the artful persuasion and
duplicity of his enemy in debauching his
own people, who were tired of the strug-
gle. Finally a truce was declared and the
tricolor again waved over the whole land.
RETRIBUTION BY THE BLACKS
Probably one of the blackest pages in
Napoleon's record is his treachery to
Toussaint in cajoling him into disarma-
ment and then having him kidnapped
HAITI: A DEGENERATING ISLAND
211
and carried back to France to die in a
dungeon. But retribution speedily fol-
lowed this perfidity, for the negroes,
seeing their beloved chief so basely and
cruelly treated, again hoisted the flag of
rebellion and, under the leadership of
Dessalines and Christophe, assisted by
the pestilential yellow fever, they drove
the intruders out of the island and into
the hands of their implacable enemy, the
British, who had again declared war
against France. It is said that this expe-
dition to reenslave the blacks cost Napo-
leon $40,000,000, besides almost all of his
troops.
On the first of January, 1804, Dessa-
lines, who followed Toussaint as general-
in-chief of the army, promulgated the
declaration of Haitien independence, and
the country has remained the Black Re-
public ever since. The name of Haiti,
as the island was designated by the abo-
riginal inhabitants, was now revived and
has never been changed. Dessalines, who
was soon afterward proclaimed em-
peror, started a bloodthirsty policy of
exterminating the French subjects who
still remained in the country, and his acts
of cruelty showed how well he had been
schooled under the French; but in spite
of this many of the planters, who had the
alternative of falling into the hands of
the English or run the risk of being mur-
dered by the negroes, remained on the
island, and as Dessalines' object became
later to restore his exhausted male popu-
lace, they were gradually allowed to re-
sume tilling the soil.
Dessalines' administration was, for-
tunately for the Republic, short-lived, but
his cruel nature and implacable hatred
of the whites led him into such acts of
bloodshed as to shame even his own race.
At the time of the insurrection in 1791
he was a slave to a negro whose name
was Dessalines, and this surname was
added to his own, Jean Jacques. He was
short in stature and strongly built, of
great activity and undaunted courage.
He undoubtedly had great military tal-
ents in spite of his want of education,
but the respect he commanded was due
rather more to the terror he inspired than
to his ability as a general. He was at
last conspired against by his own army,
arrested, and killed in an attempt to
escape, October 17, 1806
During the insurrection the Revolu-
tionists, who were mainly composed of
the negroes, had their headquarters in
the north, generally at Cape Francois.
While the colored people, many of whom
were small property-owners, had estab-
lished a colony by themselves in the
southern part of the island, and having
but little in common with the slaves, there
was a gradual separation of the two
classes, the blacks predominating in the
north and the colored people in the south.
Upon Dessalines' death, Christophe,
one of Toussaint's generals, took his
place, and several years later declared
himself king under the title of Henry I,
King of Haiti.
Christophe and his wife were crowned
as king and queen at Cape Francois, to
which place was given the name of Cape
Henry. The royal court, copied after the
monarchies of Europe, was established
here, and a full line of titles was given
out, many of them, such as the Count de
Lemonade and the Duke de Marmalade,
still existing on the island. Christophe,
during all his reign of 12 years, put forth
his utmost energies to develop the natural
prosperity of the island. He introduced
the Protestant religion and the English
language into the schools, but at the same
time he never ceased to prepare to defend
his country against the French, which he
rightly feared would again attempt to
reenslave it.
On a lofty mountain top above the
beautiful valley of Millot, back of Cape
Haitien, he built that remarkable struc-
ture known as Sans Souci. He lived in
this palace with his suite in a state of
regal splendor. The ruins of the palace,
now overgrown by tropical plants, are a
monument to Christophe's engineering
skill ; but more wonderful still is the stu-
pendous castle fortress, built as a refuge
in case the French should again appear.
Within the walls of this fortress, which
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
are one hundred feet high and twenty
feet thick, many of the three hundred
guns which were mounted on its parapets
remain to show the skill and endurance
which enabled them to be brought up the
steep mountain sides.
•THE EASTERN END OF THE ISLAND ASKED
FOR ANNEXATION TO UNITED STATES
In 1844 the people of the eastern end
of the island again separated themselves
from Haiti and established the Republic
of Santo Domingo, or the Dominican Re-
public, as it is officially designated, and
from that date to the present time the
two divisions have been maintained.
Under the directions of a resolution
passed in the United States Congress
January 12, 1871, a commission was dis-
patched by President Grant to investigate
the conditions in Santo Domingo. This
country has always, more or less, been a
source of solicitude to us lest some Euro-
pean power should again attempt aggres-
sions against the Monroe Doctrine. The
•commission was the result of an almost
unanimous vote by the inhabitants of the
Republic in favor of annexation of their
-country to the United States. The report
•of the commission was favorable to its
annexation, and being approved by Presi-
dent Grant, it was submitted to the Sen-
ate, which, however, took no action upon
it. On January 10, 1873, the Bay and
Peninsula of Samana were ceded to a
•company formed in the United States,
and through the means this company
afforded us it was thought a coaling sta-
tion might be established here for the use
•of the navy, but it is probably fortunate
for us, at least, that this was not done,
.and as the contract with the company was
withdrawn in March, 1874, the matter
was eliminated from our diplomacy.
As will always be the case, the offi-
•cers of the United States Navy have been
interested spectators in the progress of
this island. The navy is now engaged in
an extensive hydrographic survey along
its coasts, which is much needed, not only
for ourselves, but for the commerce of the
world in general.
Many naval officers who have been sent
to guard American interests on the island
have frequently been called upon to
handle matters of international policy,
and the responsibility resting upon them
at such times is rarely conveyed by the
brief accounts given of such transactions
in the daily press. Almost always during
the many local disturbances which occur
here an American war vessel is present,
and sometimes her captain is called upon
to settle, upon the spur of the moment,
questions that might affect the very peace
of the nation, and the officer must stand
or fall as his course meets with approval
or disapproval by his superiors. A long
list of such cases might be made, but I
will briefly refer to only one.
PRESENT CONDITIONS IN SANTO DOMINGO
As stated by the President in his an-
nual message to Congress for the year
1905, "The conditions in Santo Domingo
have, for a number of years, grown from
bad to worse, until a year ago all society
was on the verge of dissolution. For-
tunately just at this time a ruler sprang
up in Santo Domingo who, with his col-
leagues, saw the dangers threatening the
country and appealed to the friendship
of the great and powerful neighbor who
possessed the power and, as they hoped,
also the will to help them. Accordingly
the executive department of our gov-
ernment negotiated a treaty under which
we are to try to help the Dominican peo-
ple to straighten out their finances."
For this purpose Commander A. C.
Dillingham, owing to his exceptional
knowledge of the conditions in the Do-
minican Republic, due to an extended
tour of duty in that country, was ap-
pointed by the President a special com-
missioner and sent to the capital city Jan-
uary 5, 1905, to prepare, in connection
with the minister resident Mr T. C. Dam-
son, a memorandum of the treaty.
The treaty is still held in abeyance
by the Senate, but the principal feat-
ures are being carried out by American
citizens appointed by the Dominican Gov-
ernment with greater marked success
HAITI: A DEGENERATING ISLAND
213
BOYS OF SANTO DOMINGO
than was really hoped for. The collection
of practically the only revenue of the Re-
public which comes from a tax on its
exports and imports is thus separated
from political manipulation and pecula-
tion and the receipts are divided into
two parts, 45 per cent of which is allotted
for the expenses of the government,
while the remainder goes into a sinking
fund to cancel the obligations for all
claimants who hold its certificates of in-
debtedness. The result thus far is to give
into the public treasury from the smaller
portion of its income a greater amount
of money than has ever been received
heretofore from the whole revenue of
the Republic. We may well consider
if this part of our duty as an elder brother,
which we owe to our small sister re-
publics on the American continent, is
not of more benefit to ourselves, to say
nothing of our moral obligations, than
would be a resort to physical force, which
we might be led to use in order to pro-
tect the principles of the Monroe Doc-
trine, which is the basis of our political
power.
THE REMAINS OF COLUMBUS SAID TO BE
AT SANTO DOMINGO
One achievement of which the Domin-
ican people are very proud is that of still
retaining within their borders all that
remains of the illustrious discoverer of
America.
These remains were sent from Val-
ladolid, Spain, after the death of Colum-
bus, to the land he discovered, and de-
posited in the cathedral at Santo Do-
mingo City. When the island passed
under French control, in 1795, a frigate
was sent from Havana to remove to that
city the body of the great Captain. The
officials, finding a vault under the pave-
ment of the Cathedral, thought a person
of no less rank than Columbus could
be buried within, but they failed to make
such an examination as would insure
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
this fact. In great state the leaden case
containing the body there found was
transported to Havana and deposited in
a niche, made for that purpose, in the
cathedral of the capital city of the Span-
ish West Indies. In 1877, while repairs
were being made to the cathedral in Santo
Domingo City, another vault was dis-
covered, containing another leaden casket,
in which there were not only fragments
of bones but a silver plate oh which was
the name "Don Cristobal Colon, discov-
erer of America." This and other proofs
found showed conclusively, to every Do-
minican at least, that their worshiped
hero was safe in the land he loved. One
can imagine the rejoicing that the dis-
covery of these precious relics brought
to the inhabitants. It is certain that
they were in marked contrast with the
reception accorded the distinguished Ad-
miral in Spain, when he returned in
chains from his last voyage to the New
World. Of course, the Spanish people
would never admit that when they hauled
down their flag on the American conti-
nent, for the last time, on January i,
1899, they did not take with them all
that remained of the man who had done
so much for them and the world at large.
HAITI IS DEGENERATING TO A CONDITION
OF BARBARISM
It is not possible within the limits of
this paper to go into details regarding
the turbulent history of Haiti. The fact
that of its 21 rulers, from Dessalines to
the one now holding power, four only
have completed their terms of office, the
most of them being driven out of the
country, will show the general tendency
of the people to revolution. History is
here constantly repeating itself, summed
up in the general statement that the
"outs" are always struggling to get into
power, while the "ins" are striving to
retain possession of. the spoils of office.
It is said that Haiti is getting blacker
and blacker, the white element having
been practically exterminated or removed
from the island. It is not that the whites
are unkindly treated here, but so many
difficulties surround their holding of
property that development is impossibler
and the white people are reluctant to
invest money in a country where there
is such little promise of an income from
it. It is the one country in the world
where white blood is at a discount.
There is, however, quite as much antag-
onism existing between the mulattoes and
the blacks as is usually found between
the blacks and whites in our own coun-
try, so the colored question is not elimi-
nated from politics even here, and parties
are generally lined up according to color,
and as a rule the blacks and mulattoes
alternate in the control of the executive
offices.
In all its political history, Haiti, the
beautiful, has been torn almost to shreds
by its turbulent inhabitants, led on by a
few inspiring chiefs, who rarely have had
any other object in view than personal
gain. The inhabitants themselves are
naturally as gentle, except when over-
come by the barbarous religious customs
handed down from their African ances-
tors, as were the aborigines that Colum-
bus found here. A traveler may pass
from one end of the island to the other
without being molested, unless his visit
happens to be coincident with one of its
many revolutions, when, owing to the
poor shooting of the soldiers he runs
more risk of his life than do the partici-
pants themselves. The Haitians do not
consider it a crime to rob the govern-
ment, and hence stealing from it is gen-
eral. They rather regard it as a duty for
the government to provide sustenance for
the people, and if it does not do so, they
use their prerogative to enforce their
claim.
As practically 90 per cent of the popu-
lation are descendants from the former
slaves, who have no higher ambition than
to possess sufficient means to supply the
demands of their appetites, their wants
are easily satisfied. The scant clothing
required in the Torrid Zone is obtained
without much difficulty, and as enlist-
ment in the army is sure to gain both of
these necessities, the natives naturally
HAITI: A DEGENERATING ISLAND
2I5
SKETCH MAP OF HAITI
seek the life of a soldier, and as such
they quickly transfer their allegiance to
the highest bidder or, in fact, to any one
offering a change. Owing to the general
lack of enterprise among the lower classes
of the people and the greed of the few
who from time to time control the admin-
istration of the revenues, the only hope
of the country is to have some strong
man, such as Diaz of Mexico, revolu-
tionize the methods of the government.
VOODOOISM STILL PRACTICED
No accurate history of Haiti can be
written without a reference to the horri-
ble sorcery, called the religion of Voodoo,
which was introduced into the country
with the slaves from Africa. Its creed
is that the God Voodoo has the power
usually ascribed to the Christian's Lord,
and that he shows himself to his good
friends, the negroes, under the form of
a non-venomous snake, and transmits his
power through a chief priest or priestess.
These are called either king and queen,
master or mistress, or generally as papa-
lois and mama-lois. The principal act of
worship consists of a wild dance, attended
by grotesque gesticulations, which leads
up to the most disgraceful orgies.
A secret oath binds all the voodoos, on
the taking of which, the lips of the neo-
phyte are usually touched with warm
goat's blood, which is intended to inspire
terror. He promises to submit to death
should he ever reveal the secrets of the
fraternity, and to put to death any traitor
to the sect. It is affirmed, and no doubt
is true, that on special occasions a sacri-
fice is made of a living child, or the
"goat without horns," as it is called, and
then cannibalism in its worst form is
indulged in. Under the circumstances
of taking the oath of allegiance, it should
cause no surprise that the Haitiens claim
that this is not true and defy any white
man to produce evidence of guilt. But,
notwithstanding, no one can read the hor-
rible tales published by Sir Spencer Saint
John, one of the British ministers to
Haiti, which describes in detail the re-
volting practices of the voodoos, together
with the proofs he brings to substantiate
the truth of the allegations, without com-
ing to the reluctant conclusion that canni-
balism is resorted to in these meetings. Of
course, no white man could long live on
the island after having given testimony
leading to the conviction of culprits in
such cases, and therefore the negroes'
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
demand for proof can never be satisfied.
Indeed, it is said that even some presi-
dents who have openly discouraged the
voodoo practices have come to violent
deaths from this cause.
TESTIMONY OF AN EYE WITNESS
The character of the meetings of the
voodoos, which take place in secluded
spots in the thick woods, are well known,
and I have been given a description of
one of them from an eyewitness, who is
an officer of our navy, which no one
could hear without a shudder. He states
in brief that one day while out hunting
lie abruptly ran into a camp of worship-
ers, which was located in a lonely spot
in the woods, and the horrors he there
saw made an indelible impression upon
his mind.
When his presence was discovered he
was immediately seized by a frenzied
•crowd of men and women, and for some
minutes there did not seem to be a ques-
tion but that his life was to be forfeited ;
but the papa-lois called a halt and a coun-
cil, apparently, to determine what action
should be taken, and while this was in
session a handful of coin, judicously scat-
tered, diverted the thoughts of the ne-
groes for the time being from their cap-
tive. The usual sacrifice of a live white
rooster was now brought on, seeing
which the people were called back to
their worship, and the ceremonies went
on in his presence.
In the horrible struggle which took
place for possession, the bird was torn
literally to pieces, and he had no doubt
that its accompaniment, the "goat with-
out horns," would soon follow. While
this was in progress his presence seemed
to be forgotten, and, watching a good
opportunity, he ran for his very life, not
stopping until he reached the protection
of his ship.
This officer has to his credit one of the
most gallant deeds enacted during the
Civil War, for which he received pro-
motion by act of Congress, but his com-
rades on board his ship said they never
saw a man more frightened than he was
when he returned to them, and he him-
self says the memory of the event pro-
duces a horrible nightmare which he
will never be able to overcome.
There is no doubt these voodoo prac-
tices keep the negro- in touch with that
"call of the wild" which perhaps even the
white man, if restricted in civilizing in-
fluences and treated as they have been,
might be led to follow ; but it is to be
hoped that education, which the best of
the Haitiens are now acquiring for their
own families and are striving to make
universal in the land, will in a few years
stamp out this horrible practice, with all
its evils. It is well for us to consider
whether we too may not expect some such
acts of savagery to break out in our coun-
try if our own colored people are not edu-
cated for better things.
PEST HOLES OF THE WEST INDIKS
Of the eleven ports of Haiti open to
foreign commerce, Cape Haitien and
Port-au-Prince are the largest and most
progressive.
Cape Haitien, or "The Cape," as it is
commonly called, is situated on the north-
western coast, at the foot of a hill that
slopes back to the sea, with most pictur-
esque surroundings. It has a commodi-
ous harbor and supports a population of
30,000 or 40,000 people. Under the
French, it was the capital of the colony,
and its wealth, splendor, and luxury
gained for it the name of Little Paris ;
but now the structures erected by the
French in colonial days are a mass of
ruins, the parks overgrown with tropical
weeds, the fountains chocked with debris,
the gutters filled with filth, all produ-
cing pestilential emanations from which
foreigners speedily run away, if they are
forced into its environments.
Port-au-Prince, the present capital of
the Republic, as well as its largest and
most important city, is likewise most
picturesquely located at the foot of hills,
where one may escape from its blistering
and filthv streets to mountain resorts that
HAITI: A DEGENERATING ISLAND
217
would be popular if located in almost
any country of the world. Unlike Cape
Haitien, the city is cut off from the trade
winds, to which this island owes so much
for its salubriousness, and therefore it is
hot ; but still the traveler caught in the
town may frequently felicitate himself
when he reads that cities in our own
country have higher temperatures by 10
to 15 degrees than is usually found here.
The city is well supplied with the most
delicious mountain water, and if its
60,000 inhabitants used it as freely as do
Americans, it might be as clean as nature
made it. As it is, it may well hold the
palm for being the most filthy, foul smell-
ing, and consequently fever-stricken city
in the world. The gutters of the streets,
which may be said to cover the whole
road-beds, are filled with stagnant waters
and are used as cesspools by the people.
But for the torrential rains, which pour
down the mountain sides and carry off all
the filth into the beautiful bay, even a
Haitien could not live there. But the
bay, thus polluted, is quite as much of a
menace to health as the city itself. Dur-
ing the visits of American men-of-war
to the port, most of the time is spent in
keeping the people from the pestilential
vapors which emanate from the sea itself.
The water of the harbor is so bad that
it cannot be used even for scrubbing the
decks of the ships.
I recall a painful incident which oc-
curred here during one of my visits many
years ago. A French man-of-war was
anchored in the Port when our own
cruiser entered it, and so rapidly were her
people dying from the dreaded yellow
fever that her flag remained at half-mast
practically all during our stay there. A
few weeks later we saw this same vessel
in Hampton Roads, Virginia, and learned
that all but five of her crew had died from
the effects of the fever, after which they
got some of the natives to sail the ship to
our own ports ; but even the natives were
so reduced in number that it was neces-
sary for the flag-ship of the French North
American squadron to tow her consort to
Halifax in an effort to freeze out the
dreadful disease.
It is thus that the people have them-
selves made this island of "Little Spain"
a veritable pest-hole.
But we should not forget, however,
that they are our neighbors, and that we
owe it to ourselves as a Christian nation
to help them over the many pitfalls of
popular government, which we by exam-
ple led them to establish before they had
gone through the preparation necessary
for the proper use of universal suffrage,
and which even our forefathers were not
too well prepared to take up, after hun-
dreds of years of enlightenment and study
of political science and economy and re-
publican principles.
Let us, moreover, not make a similar
mistake to the one here enacted, lest our
own wards go through the horrors which
have so darkened the history of the Black
and Brown republics.
THE MADURA TEMPLES
BY J. S. CHANDLER, AUBURNDALE, MASSACHUSETTS
THE last Hindu dynasty that
reigned in South India was the
Nayaka line of rulers ; and the
greatest of the Nayakars was Tirumala,
who reigned from 1623 to 1659. Al-
though frequently engaged in wars and
expeditions, he found time to erect a vast
palace, construct an immense tank or
reservoir, and add great buildings to the
temple of Siva that was the center of the
city.
The temple had its shrines for the god
and goddess and was especially extended
on the god's side by a porch of a thou-
sand pillars, built by one of Tirumala's
ancestors.
The worship of the temple combined
that of the two gods, Siva and Vishnu,
symbolized in the marriage of Vishnu's
sister to Siva. The goddess then was
a representative of Vishnu. Now the
Nayaka rulers were worshippers of
Vishnu, so when Tirumala enlarged the
temple he strengthened the Vishnu ele-
ment by enlarging the goddess' side of
the temple and making it equal to the
god's portion.
Among other buildings, he constructed
the "golden lily tank" and surrounded it
by pillared colonnades. The walls are
covered with paintings of local legends,
including the 64 miracles that Siva is said
to have worked in the region of Madura.
These miracles are represented as sports,
all the god's acts being play to him.
Between the tank and the shrine of the
goddess stands the Porch of the Parrots,
so called from the screeching caged par-
rots always kept in it. The pillars of this
porch are monolithic statues, of which
five represent the five Pandava heroes of
the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata. These
heroes are connected with Vishnu wor-
ship, another indication of Tirumala's
connection with it.
The great wall surrounding the temple
incloses nearly 14 acres. Outside the
wall and opposite to the great pagoda of
the god's portion, he constructed the
choultry, or porch, that bears his name.
It is 333 feet long and 105 feet wide,
roofed with long slabs of granite, which
are supported by four parallel rows of
124 sculptured stone pillars 20 feet high.
He also commenced, but left unfinished,
a royal pagoda that was intended to be
the finest tower in southern India. The
door posts of the gateway through the
completed story are formed of monoliths
over 50 feet high and 3 feet wide, carved
with exquisite scrolls of foliage.
His second structure was the raft tank,
or Teppakulam, a reservoir measuring
i ,000 feet on the north and south and
950 on the east and west, faced all round
the sides with cut granite and surmounted
by a handsome parapet and inside walk
of the same material. In the middle of
the reservoir is a square island, also faced
with cut granite, on which, among green
palms and flowering trees and jessamine
gardens, is a small white temple with a
pagoda tower, flanked at the four corners
of the island with graceful miniature
pagodas.
Every January the birthday of Tiru-
mala is celebrated by a feast of lights, in
which the whole tank is illuminated by
thousands of little lamps on the inside of
the parapet, while the images of the god
and goddess are floated around the island
on rafts built up like pagodas.
The third great work of Tirumala was
the vast palace, an arched and domed
structure with Saracenic features, in
strong contrast to the rectangular forms
of the temple buildings.
One courtyard indicates the magnifi-
cence of the whole. It is 252 feet long
and 151 feet wide, round which runs a
roofed arcade of great beauty supported
on tall stone pillars 40 feet in height,
connected by foliated brick arches.
Round three sides of this court, at the
back of the arcade, runs a very handsome
line of lofty cloisters 43 feet wide and
THE MADURA TEMPLES
219
2 2O
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
THE MADURA TEMPLES
GOLDEN ULY TANK, MADURA
Photo from J. S. Chandler
222
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photo from J. S. Chandler
TEPPAKULAM OR RAFT TANK, MADURA
upheld by three parallel rows of pillars
supporting arches some 26 feet high. On
the fourth side of the court the cloister
is much deeper and finer, being alto-
gether 105 feet wide, supported on five
rows of huge pillars and roofed with
three great domes. The central and
largest dome measures 60 feet in diam-
eter and is 73 feet above the ground, and
has in front of it a superb portico, the pil-
lars of which are 55 feet to the spring of
the arches.
Originally this domed cloister consti-
tuted the public reception hall, and in its
center stood a square building of black
granite inclosing a chamber made of
ivory. Within this chamber, again, there
was a jeweled throne, on which the king
was accustomed to take his seat at the
great nine-nights festival, surrounded by
all his banners or ensigns of royalty, and
before which all kings were accustomed
to do homage.
With this cloister as a specimen, we
can accept the judgment of Father Pro-
enza, a Jesuit who wrote from Madura
in 1659, that the colossal proportions and
astonishing boldness of the royal palace
in Madura recalled the ancient monu-
ments of Thebes.
THE BEAR HUNT
REPLYING to the numerous in-
quiries from readers as to the health
of Dr Penrose, whose adventure with a
grizzly was described in the NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE for February, we
have much pleasure in saying that Dr
Penrose has now entirely recovered his
former strength and vigor and has al-
ready made plans for considerable hunt-
ing when the season opens.
In a letter to this Magazine Dr Pen-
rose says that one of the most interesting
features of his experience was the ab-
sence of pain "when being chewed by a
bear. I have read that Livingstone had
the same experience when chewed by a
lion. Men rarely suffer pain with sud-
den traumatism. What pain I had came
on some hours after the injury."
STRAW SANDALS OF JAPAN
223
AMONG HONEST PEOPLE
Straw sandals (waraji) for sale by the roadside near Arita, province of Hizen, Japan.
Country people weave these straw shoes in their leisure hours, and hang them from stakes by
the roadside for sale. The traveler helps himself to a new pair of shoes, and drops the cop-
pers in the bamboo cup. An old straw hat protects the shoemaker's stock from rain. The
custom, formerly quite common in old Japan, is dying out, now that the new treaties have gone
into effect, and foreigners are free to travel everywhere without passports. Photographed by
Eliza R. Scidcore. Copyrighted by Harper Bros.
THE NATIVE OYSTERS OF THE WEST
COAST
BY ROBERT E. C. STEARNS
HONORARY ASSOCIATE IN ZOOLOGY, U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM
IN reading- Dr Smith's interesting
article, "Our Fish Immigrants," in
a recent number of this Maga-
zine, his comments on the native oysters
of the west coast attracted my attention.
When we consider the fact that our
"natives" are absolutely unpretentious,
it would seem as if criticism should be
tempered with mercy.
Several species and varieties of oys-
ters* inhabit the long stretch of shore
between Vancouver Island and San
Diego, and doubtless these are found
for a considerable distance north and
south of the points indicated, as well as
in the various bays and inlets connected
directly or indirectly with the sea, espe-
cially that great body of inland water,
Puget Sound. They also occur on the
rocky margins of the islands in the Santa
Barbara Channel and elsewhere on the
islands and islets farther north. In
bygone days they furnished food for the
Indians, to a limited extent, as they do
now to the palefaces. The abundance
of abalones and "clams" of many species
afforded an ampler supply to the "red
men," as is proven by the remains of clam
bakes in the mounds and shell-heaps
(Kitchenmiddens) here and there, silent
testimony of many old-time festivals.
The principal or best-known native
oyster is O. htrida, which is the only
species of commercial importance. It is
always purchasable in the San Francisco
markets and has been to my knowledge
for nearly or quite fifty years. At the
present time it is quotable on the retail
stalls at 40 to 50 cents a hundred, the
transplanted Atlantic O. virginica selling
at 30 to 40 cents a dozen.
* Ostrea lurida, and varieties expansa and
laticaudata; O. concaphila, also O. amara ; the
latter, however, belongs to a more southerly
fauna.
The common "natives" of the British
Isles and the general seaboard of north-
ern Europe, O. edulis, according to com-
mon report, have the same "coppery
flavor" as O. lurida; as they usually oc-
cur, they are about the same size. In the
matter of flavor, it should be borne in
mind that oysters of the same species
vary considerably according to the
locality or station where they occur. In
the still, shallow waters of lagoons they
are usually much saltier than in the proxi-
mate deeper water along the shores, that
are more thoroughly washed by the daily
tides. This was observed by me when
on the Gulf coast of Florida in 1869.
Presumably the above, and other factors
not so easily perceived, affect the flavor
one way or another.
The writing of this paper revives the
memory of a plate of "natives" eaten
at Astoria, in July, 1882, on the invitation
of the late Justice Stephen J. Field, of
the Supreme Court of the United States.
By a happy coincidence we were fellow-
travelers on the steamer from Portland,
Oregon, to San Francisco. We had
known each other for twenty years. Our
oyster feast was therefore akin to a love
feast, for the Justice was a genial com-
panion. He pronounced the oysters
good, and they were good; the best
"natives" I had ever tasted. Locality, as
before remarked, is to be considered
when we discuss flavors.
This applies with equal or greater
force to clams. Mya arenaria, the com-
mon long-necked clam, or "mananose,"
occurs in clean sandy stations ; also in
beds that are more or less muddy, in
which case the flavor is impaired and the
meats, as an epicure would say, have
an "off taste."
Our native O. lurida is small ; when
"shucked," about the size of a half-dol-
OYSTERS OF THE WEST COAST
225
lar piece; those from cultivated beds
somewhat larger.
Although California (San Francisco
County) is credited in the report of the
United States Fish Commissioner for
1904 with producing 300,000 pounds, of
the value of $92,000, the principal supply
of that city is derived from certain local-
ities in Washington, which state, ac-
cording to the same report, exhibits a
yield of 1,069,461 pounds (equal to
152,780 bushels), valued at $279,312,
while the Oregon statistics show only
6,944 pounds, worth $1,488. It will be
seen that the value of "natives'' for the
year, in the three states, makes a total of
$372,800 — no insignificant sum — being
more than half the value of the annual
output of the Atlantic or transplanted
oyster.
The oyster-beds of Washington are
subject to occasional severe climatic con-
tingencies.
The Puget Sound oyster-beds are at
Samish Bay, in Skagget County; Oyster
Bay, in Mason County, and Mud Bay,
Big Skookum, and North Bay, in Thurs-
ton County ; on the ocean coast of Wash-
ington, Shoal water or Willapa Bay and
Toke Point cove. The Oregon region
is pretty much restricted to Yaquina Bay,
in Lincoln County.
On the night of January 13, 1907, the
concurrence of an unusually low tide
and a cold snap, the temperature having
fallen to 18 degrees below the freezing-
mark, was disastrous to the oysters and
oyster-beds, both native and eastern
plants, in many localities in different
parts of Puget Sound. The loss was
estimated at "several hundred thousand
dollars," as "new beds will have to be
planted, and it will be five years before
the so-called 'Olympia oyster' will again
be on the market."
All along our western coasts the tides
range very large in January, running
above average height and below average
low water. Here (San Francisco) they
ranged from 7 to 8 feet in January. At
Olympia they must range nearly three
times that (17.2 feet). In June there is
a good range, but not equal to January.
Of course there are certain conditions
that decrease or increase the range.
Strong southerly winds would run the
low tide much below the average. A
strong southerly gale on the coast at San
Francisco has run the high water to 9.93
feet, or more than three feet above the
average, as stated by Prof. George David-
son.
The low June tides mentioned by Pro-
fessor Davidson, offer exceptional oppor-
tunities to the observer and collector of
marine life along the shore. So large an
area of the sea bed is uncovered that
many forms not to be had between or-
dinary tides are then obtainable.
Then, too, the famous geoduck,* known
to science as Panopea gencrosa, the
"Giant clam of Puget Sound," is ac-
cessible. It sometimes reaches the weight
of sixteen pounds. From an epicurian
point of view, it holds the same relation
to other edible mollusks that woodcock
and Chesapeake Bay "canvas-backs" do
to other birds, and "stewed terrapin" to
other dainties. The late Professor Baird
would have given a thousand or two dol-
lars to have successfully planted this bi-
valve on the Atlantic 'side of the con-
tinent.
South of the boundary line of the
United States and Mexico, on the outer
shores of the peninsula of Lower Cali-
fornia, as well as in the Gulf of Cali-
fornia, 600 to 700 miles long, the two
shores making a reach of 1,200 to 1,400
miles, we have a region which we may
safely assume includes many localities
exceptionally well adapted for oyster
culture. The general mollusk-fauna of
the Gulf is particularly rich in number of
species and abundance of individuals.
This fauna includes several species of
oysters, of which two more are of good>
merchantable size and worthy of men-
tion, as sooner or later they will find a
place in trade quotations. One of these
* Pronounced gwo'-duck; also known as
Glycimeris gencrosa. See my paper on above,
with numerous figures, in Bulletin of the U. S.
Fish Commission, vol. in, No. 23, October 19,
1883, and Annual Report of the American
Fisheries Society, April meeting, 188$; also-
Forest and Stream, May 28, 1885.
226
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
masses three feet thick and extending for
miles. These are found in the Berkeley
Hills ; but elsewhere in California.
Miocene and Pliocene oysters are found
thirteen inches long eight inches wide
and six inches thick. Alas for the de-
generacy of their descendants, the
modern California oyster. And yet, upon
second thought, there may be nothing to
regret. It may be that in the gradual
decrease in size the flavor has been cor-
respondingly intensified. It may be that
what was then diffused through a great
mass of flesh, and therefore greatly
diluted, was all conserved and concen-
trated into the exquisite piquancy char-
acteristic of the little California oyster of
the present day. If so we are consoled."
TOPOGRAPHIC MAPS ISSUED BY
THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY IN
1907.
closely resembles the Atlantic O. vir-
ginica, and was so referred to as long ago
as 1863 by Dr. P. P. Carpenter in his list
of west coast shells,* and O. iridescent,
of somewhat darker semi-nacre. There
are many examples of these in the Na-
tional Museum. The first of the above
was collected in 1850, or about that time,
at La Paz, by Major Rich, of the U. S.
Army, and is further credited to Marga-
rita Bay, on the outer shore of the
peninsula (Xantus Collection, 1860).
As many as forty years ago the im-
portation of these Gulf oysters was at-
tempted by San Francisco parties. The
enterprise failed for some reason — pre-
sumably, uncertainty of transportation
and other requisite facilities. With quick
service by railroad, which is certain to
come before many years, and the neces-
sary ice plant or refrigerator cars,
Ostrea-culture in the Gulf of California
will sooner or later be a profitable in- The new topographic maps published by the
, ,. , . y . . United States Geological Survey in 1907 com-
dustry, as the general region is immune prise 104 sheets and cover areas in 32 states
from some of the perils that are so dis- and 2 territories, as shown by the following
couraging to enterprises of this kind in lists. (Address Director U. S. Geological Sur-
more northerly latitudes, for natural in- vey> Washington, D. C.)
crease could be safelv counted upon.
For a self-perpetuating stock for the Alab-a;; l^TSg^BSl
northern waters, as long ago as 1886, at DO Leeds
the request of Professor Baird, I an- Alaska Casadepaga
swcred a letter addressed to him by Do ..Solomon
parties in San Francisco, and recom- Ariz°™ •• ' ' Fort SkDowen
mended experimenting with some edible rj0 Sacaton
species from Japan, as being more likely Do Vishnu
to propagate than any species from a California Colnsa
more southerlv source, temperature of £° Davisyille
. j- , /TV, . i-ii Do Dnnnjffan
waters considered. This very desirable Do Holtville
'experiment remains to be tried. Do! . ... '. '. ' ...... '. '. '. '. '. '. '. '. '. .'.Indian Valley
In writing of the Geologic age of the Do Mount Whitney
region about Berkeley, the late Prof. Do Olancha
Joseph Le Contet said: "Oysters, such gj ; '.Woodland
as would astonish a latter-day California, DO Yosemite Valley
existed in such numbers that they formed Colorado Mount Olympus
great oyster-banks. Their agglomerated D? v; v ; San Crjstol?al
shells, each shell five or six inches long Geor^a ^Tafbonon
.and three to four inches wide form Idaho-Montana'. '. .'.'.'.'.'.' . Creur d'Alene Special
Illinois Belleville
* Report to the British Association, 1863 Do Eldorado
(pp. 542 and 621) , Smithsonian Miscellaneous Do Mahomet
Collections, No. 252. Washington, December, Do Springfield
1872. Illinois-Indiana-Kentucky New Haven
t "A Berkeley Year," &c. Published in Iowa Decorah
Berkeley,. California, in 1898. Do Des Moines
GEOLOGICAL SURVEY TOPOGRAPHIC MAPS 227
Kentucky Louisville
Kentucky-Indiana-Illinois New Haven
Maine The Forks
Maryland Laurel
Do Relay
Michigan Marquette
Do Marquette Special
Montana Kintla Lakes
Montana-Idaho Coeur d'Alene Special
Nebraska Nebraska City
Nevada Ely Special
New Hampshire Sunapee
New Jersey-Pennsylvania Trenton
New York Eden
Do Lake Pleasant
Do Massena
Do Piseco Lake
Do Port Leyden
Do Sangerfield
Do Tupper Lake
Do Winfield
North Carolina Beckford
North Carolina-South Carolina Charlotte
Do Cowee
Do Saluda
North Dakota Bismarck
Do Wyndmere
Ohio Arlington
Do Blanchester
Do Bluffton
Do Bristolville
Do Brookville
Do Dayton
Do Garrettsville
Do Greenville
Do Jefferson
Do London
Do Mentor
Do South Charleston
Do Upper Sandusky
Do West Manchester
Do Zaleski
Ohio-Pennsylvania Andover
Do Kinsman
Oklahoma Chandler
Pennsylvania Claysville
Do Greensburg
Do Honeybrook
Do Millerstown
Do Neshannock
Do New Bloomfield
Do Pittsburg
Pennsylvania-Ohio Andover
Do Kinsman
South Carolina ... . Sharon
South Carolina-North Carolina Charlotte
Do Cowee
Do Saluda
South Dakota Belle Fourche
Do Elk Point
Do Redwater
Utah Cottonwood Special
Do Frisco Special
Do Iron Springs Special
Utah- Wyoming Gilbert Peak
Virginia Hampton
Do Norfolk Special
Do Yorktown
Washington Elaine
Do Mount Adams
West Virginia Arnoldsburg
Do Belington
Do Elizabeth
Do Harrisville
Do Holbrook
Do Kingwood
Do Ripley
Do Spencer
Do Thornton
Wisconsin Evansville (resurvey)
Do Sun Prairie
Do Geneva-Racine
Wyoming Kirwin
Do Younts Peak
Lettering and conventional signs.
Four of the maps listed above^the Coeur
d'Alene Special (Idaho-Mont.), the Geneva-
Racine (Wis.), the Vishnu (Ariz.), and the
Yosemite Valley (Cal.) — are much larger than
the regular atlas sheets of the Survey and are
sold at 10 cents each. The other sheets are of
standard size — 16^2 by 20 inches — and are sold
at 5 cents each in lots of less than 100; the
wholesale rate for the standard sheets is $3 a
hundred.
Much of the work represented by these
maps was done by cooperation between state
surveys and the National Survey. California,
Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and West
Virginia make generous appropriations for
work of this kind. Other states cooperating
are Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland,
Michigan, North Carolina, and Oklahoma. In
addition to those listed, maps of Sacramento
Valley, Cal., from A to N, on a scale of
1 124000, sold at 40 cents each, were published
in cooperation with the state. These are photo-
lithographs prepared from the same base from
which the regular sheets are made.
228 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
CROSSING A Swiss LAKE
Photo from Mrs Gardiner Greene Hubbard
CROSSING A SWISS LAKE
230 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photo by H. D. Stolesburg, Royal Geographical Journal, I^ondon
"PADAUNG" WOMAN AND CHILD, SOUTH SHAN STATES, BURMA
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY
PROGRAM OF MEETINGS FOR FEBRUARY AND
MARCH
All meetings will be held at the National Rifles'
Armory
Friday, February 21 — "Persia, Past and Pres-
ent," by Dr A. V. Williams Jackson, of Co-
lumbia University. Illustrated with unusual
pictures taken by Professor Jackson on exten-
sive journeys through the ancient kingdom.
Friday, February 28 — "Holland's War with
the Sea," by Prof. James Howard Gore, George
Washington University. The romantic and
picturesque in Holland's national life will be
described by Professor Gore, , ancf illustrated
with lantern slides.
Friday, March 6 — "The Missions of Califor-
nia," by Hon. Joseph R. Knowland, M. C. from
California. Illustrated.
Friday, March 13 — "Our Immigrants," by
United States Senator Dillingham, of Vermont.
Illustrated.
Friday, March 20 — "Reclaiming the West,"
by Mr C. J. Blanchard, U. S. Reclamation
Service. Mr Blanchard will describe the open-
ing to settlement of the lands irrigated by the
great government works. Illustrated.
Friday, March 27 — "The Physical Geography
of the Sea," by Rear Admiral Colby M. Ches-
ter, U. S. Navy. Illustrated with moving pic-
tures and lantern slides.
Friday, April 3 — "Cathedrals, Mosques, and
Temples of the World," by Hon. O. P. Austin,
Chief U. S. Bureau of Statistics. Illustrated
with moving pictures and lantern slides. (Last
lecture of the season.)
VOL. XIX, No. 4
WASHINGTON
APRIL, 1908
— D
TH
AT:
D
ALONG THE OLD INCA HIGHWAY
BY HARRIET CHALMERS ADAMS
With photographs by the author
ON a June morning a season or two
ago, we started out from Sicuani,
then the terminus of the South-
ern Railway of Peru, for Cuzco, ancient
capital of the Incas. We had decided not
to engage passage on the regular stage
coach which connects Sicuani with Cuzco,
but to journey instead by private vehicle,
that we might loiter by the wayside to
study the Quichuas, the remnant of a
once mighty people who prospered in this
highland country. Remembering the
Spanish proverb, "If you can't get what
you like, like what you get," I pretended
to be quite enthusiastic over our equi-
page, which consisted of a rickety cart
holding the two of us and our cholo
driver, two slow but well-meaning mules
in the lead. The Peruvian cholo is of
mixed Indian and Spanish blood and con-
siders himself in every way superior to
the pure-blooded Quichua.
From Sicuani we traveled over the old
Inca highway, worn by the feet of many
pilgrims, of many llama trains, in the
days before the Spanish conquest. The
home life in these bolsones, the fertile
mountain basins which are linked with
the valley of Cuzco, is little changed since
the long ago. The people are now of
Roman Catholic faith and a church tower
marks the site of each village, oxen and
other domestic animals have been intro-
duced ; but the crude huts, the homespun
dress, the primitive method of agricul-
ture, belong to centuries long past.
We were ro fortunate as to make this
journey at harvesting time, and while
farming in the World's Roof Garden isn't
exactly "up to date," it is most inter-
esting to the traveler. In threshing the
grain the men drive the oxen about in a
circle, encouraging the poor animals by
yanking their tails; in winnowing, the
grain and chaff are blown out through a
horn, that the wind may separate them.
A crooked stick is used in plowing, but
what the Quichua farmer lacks in mod-
ern machinery he makes up in the deco-
rative head-dress of his oxen.
In costume these mountaineers are
most picturesque. Throughout the An-
dean highlands the headcovering changes
with the locality, and on the road to
Cuzco it consists of a large, flat hctt,
usually of homespun, dyed bright blue or
red, bedecked with tinsel (a modern in-
novation). Both men and women wear
this headgear. The men are attired in
knee-breeches, short jackets, and pon-
chos; the women in short skirts and low-
cut blouses. They are bare-legged and
seem scantily clad at an altitude of 11,000
feet above the sea.
In the villages through which we passed
the huts were built of mud and thatch,
232
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ALONG THE OLD INCA HIGHWAY
233
234 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
FOOT TRAVELERS
INCA BURIAL TOMB AND ANDEAN HUT OF MUD AND THATCH
ALONG THE OLD INCA HIGHWAY
235
QUICHUA FARMERS
PLOWING AT AN ELEVATION OF 1 1 ,OOO FEET
236
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
I w
1°
s ^
3 E
W w
O «:
o a
W
u
c*
w
W
Sf
w
^
ALONG THE OLD INCA HIGHWAY
237
238
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
GATHERING
and untanned hides covered the door-
ways; within there were no furnishings
save the few crude cooking utensils. The
head of the household evidently "slept on
the mat with the dog and the cat, the
rest of the family close by," no better
cared for than his llamas in the nearby
corral.
The graceful llamas, little cousins to
the camel, are closely associated with my
remembrance of the Andean highlanders.
Domesticated long ago, they are the best
friends of the mountaineers, furnishing
wool for clothing, fuel, bearing burdens
patiently, calling for little or no care,
as they graze by the wayside and re-
quire little water. As in the days of Ata-
hulpa, so today a train of laden llamas
slowly journeys toward Cuzco; in the
rear a Quichua boy and girl, both spin-
ning as they walk, using primitive imple-
ments, a baby strapped to the young
mother's back. The llamas turn their
FOR THE: HOME:
heads quickly to right and left, their
curious eyes ever shifting; the young
man and woman constantly chew the
dried coca leaf, which deadens hunger,
cold, and fatigue, and watch for the flag
which cheers, which waves triumphant
on this ancient highway — the little, white
flag which marks a hut where chicha is
sold.
Chicha is the Peruvian drink made
from fermented corn. It is highly intox-
icating and its victims are legion on
fiesta days. There are, as I remember,
about seventy feast days of the Church
celebrated annually in Peru, and the
cholos and Quichuas mark these days less
by religious fervor than by an all con-
suming passion for chicha. We decided
that chicha was an acquired taste; it is
as bitter as the Mexican pulque. Another
Peruvian drink is aguadiente, a strong
native brandy.
The fare of the highlanders is meager,
ALONG THE OLD INCA HIGHWAY
239
REAR GUARD OF A LLAMA TRAIN
BEGGARS
240 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ALONG THE OLD INCA HIGHWAY
241
A FULL-BLOODED QUICHUA, DESCENDANT OF A PEOPLE WHO LAID THESE GREAT STONES
242 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ALONG THE OLD INCA HIGHWAY
243
244 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ALONG THE OLD INCA HIGHWAY
246
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
85
ALONG THE OLD INCA HIGHWAY
247
248
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
FARMING IN THE WORLD S ROOF GARDEN
consisting of maize, chuno, the frozen
potato, cholona, dried goat or mutton,
and quinua, a cereal which thrives at high
altitudes. We passed many little fields
brightened by the reddening quinua, its
tall stalks waving like corn. The valleys
through which we journeyed were nar-
row, bordered on either side by steep
mountain walls. High up on the hill-
sides were cultivated patches, little farms
which seemed in danger of falling over
into the swiftly flowing river below. This
river is the Vilcanota (we had seen its
birth back in the snows at the Pass of
La Raya) ; beyond Cuzco it is called the
Yucay ; farther on, the Ucayali, and it is
the longest formative branch of the Ama-
zon. Our road followed the river's wind-
ings and crossed bridges laid by the Colo-
nial Spaniards on old Inca foundations.
Our first view of these massive stones
was at the ruins of the Temple of Vira-
cocha, about half a mile from the high-
way. One great wall alone remains of
this once splendid edifice, said to have
been erected by the eighth Inca ruler.
We saw many lesser ruins of the ancients
before reaching Cuzco — forts, evidently,
guarding the approach to the capital.
We managed to pick up a few words
of the Quichua language, which we had
need of later on trips beyond Cuzco,
where little or no Spanish is spoken. On
this main highway Spanish is now the
universal tongue, although the Quichuas
cling to their own expressive language,
and their sullen demeanor shows their
hatred for the white man and the half-
breed. They speak Spanish when they
must, but most ungraciously.
My pleasantest recollection of this
drive of two days is of the early evening,
when we heard the shepherds playing on
their pipes. From the hillsides where the
flocks grazed came the clear notes, monot-
onous but sweet, and the music carried
me back to Peru's olden days. As we
drove through these Andean valleys,
past villages and haciendas, each church
tower, each touch of a more modern civil-
ization, reminded me of one of the saddest
histories ever told, of the downfall and
slavery of a once contented and prosper-
ous people, now broken in spirit, degen-
erated; yet in their hearts there remains
a love for their lost idols, a reverence for
their old religion. When we at last
reached the heights overlooking Cuzco
ALONG THE OLD INCA HIGHWAY
249
RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF VIROCOCHA, ABOUT HALF A MILE FROM THE HIGHWAY
2 CO
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
the sunset glow was gilding its many
towers, and near us on a worn spot on
the highway stood a group of poorly
clothed Quichuas, with sad, unenlight-
ened faces, forgetting their cruel Span-
ish masters, forgetting their Church and
their Cross. With heads bowed and un-
covered, they stood as in the long ago,
greeting their beloved capital — Cuzco,
Sacred City of the Sun.
HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT
An Account of the Eleven Immense Irrigating
Projects to be Opened in 1908
BY C. J. BLANCHARD
STATISTICIAN, U. S. RECLAMATION SERVICE
WE have come upon a time in our
national life when the ques-
tion of providing homes for
our people bulks larger than ever before.
The time is not far distant when it will
become acute. The rapid narrowing of
the limits of our unoccupied public do-
main and the tremendous increase in land
values in all the settled sections of the
United States' render it yearly more dim-
cult for the man of small means to get a
foothold on the land. There is congestion
today in many of our cities, and the men-
ace of a great population underfed and
poorly housed looms more darkly each
year. So great is the land hunger that
already a quarter of a million families,
comprising some of the best blood of the
nation, have expatriated themselves and
taken up new homes under a foreign flag.
What is the use of preaching love of home
and country when we offer nothing but
crowded tenements to the toiler who
seeks to earn a roof over his family ?
Our nation's greatness has its founda-
tions in the home of the man whose feet
are firmly planted upon his own land.
There is no national stability in a citizen-
ship born and reared in tenements. Pa-
triotism, loyalty, and civic pride are not
bred and fostered in the crowded cen-
ters of population. The destiny of the
nation is foreshadowed in the provisions
made for the prosperity and contentment
of its citizens. An assurance that the
great mass of our people shall reside in
homes of their own is an insurance that
our future will be one of stability and
progress.
The home-making instinct is a well-
developed trait in American character.
Our forefathers who landed on the bleak
and inhospitable shores of New England,
their descendants, the pioneers who con-
quered the middle West, and the Argo-
nauts of this generation who crossed the
trackless plains were impelled by this in-
stinct more than by the love of adventure
or the lure of gold to wander forth into
strange lands.
From the very inception of our Re-
public our legislators have recognized
that it was a national duty to render the
acquirement of homes as easy as pos-
sible. This recognition was shown in
liberal grants to the defenders of the
country in Revolutionary times, and later
in the beneficent homestead law which
opened to settlement the Mississippi Val-
ley. It has been recognized since by the
enactment of other statutes making easy
the acquirement of public domain. Areas
greater in extent than many of the
original states have been donated for the
purpose of making habitable the unutil-
ized lands of the people. At one time the
An address to the National Geographic Society, March 13, 1908.
HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT
251
PUMPING BARGE; OF THE u. s. RECLAMATION SERVICE: WILUSTON
DAKOTA (SEE PAGE 252)
PROJECT, NORTH
He farmed but little, and from the nature
of his business and the methods of oper-
ation, as a rule, wanted no neighbors.
The real home-builder, who undertook
to subdue the plains to agriculture, en-
countered many difficulties. In many
sections there was no timber and he was
forced to build his house of sod or adobe.
He found the streams were not depend-
able ; they were dry in summer, when
water was most needed. Nature, how-
ever, provided an inexhaustible supply of
underground water, which the farmer
pumped into small reservoirs and then
led to his garden and orchard and sup-
plied his live stock. He harnessed the
wind, which blows almost constantly on
the prairies, and made it a cheap and
useful servant for his work.
Within the past 1 5 years there has been
an awakening to the opportunity which
lies in the Plains area, and settlements
have moved westward with such remark-
able rapidity that the day of the broad,
252 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
free range, with the old, careless, and
often inhuman methods of stock-raising,
is about over. The day of smaller flocks
and herds, winter fed and fattened on
home-grown forage, is at hand.
PROJECTS IN NORTH DAKOTA
In the Great Plains area the Reclama-
tion Service has in process of construc-
tion ii projects involving an expenditure
of $18,740,000 and the reclamation of
500,000 acres. Several of these projects
are unique, and in their engineering fea-
tures are deserving of extended descrip-
tion. All have reached a stage of con-
struction where water will be available
this season, and the hundreds of new
homes which dot the prairies show that
the settlers are preparing to put it to use.
Three of these projects are located in
North Dakota, in the valley of the Mis-
souri River, and in the vicinity of the
town of Williston. The Missouri River
at this point is a whimsical stream, habit-
ually cutting its banks and changing its
channel, so that the engineers find it im-
practicable to locate any permanent struc-
ture for the diversion of water by gravity.
Fortunately great beds of lignite were
discovered in the vicinity on public land,
and the engineers proposed that the gov-
ernment should turn coal miner, mining
its own coal and developing power there-
from. A large power-house was erected
at the mine and power is now conveyed
electrically to the river. An exceedingly
unique plan was devised to overcome the
eccentricities of the Missouri. The
pumps are placed on floating barges,
which will accommodate themselves to
changes in the river channel and in the
water level. The water is delivered
through pipes with flexible joints into
reservoirs, and from these basins is
pumped into the canals. These reser-
voirs serve to settle the silt, large quan-
tities of which are carried in solution by
the Missouri River. The central plant,
near Williston, supplies power to two of
these projects.
A heavy influx of settlers is anticipated
this spring to take up the lands to be irri-
gated. Diversified and intensive farm-
ing by irrigation will bring about a great
change in the agricultural methods now
in vogue in this section. The cultivation
of alfalfa, sugar-beets, vegetables, and
such fruits as apples, cherries, grapes,
melons, and berries of all kinds, for which
this region is adapted, will doubtless cre-
ate a prosperous community here in a few
years. This project is on the Great
Northern Railway.
LOWER YELLOWSTONE PROJECT
Not far from here, in the Lower Yel-
lowstone Valley, and embracing 66,000
acres of land in Montana and North
Dakota, is the Lower Yellowstone pro-
ject. The settlement of this large area
has been progressing rapidly, and aside
from a few thousand acres of railroad
lands, which will be sold this spring,
about all the land is filed upon. The
works include a timber-covered, rock-
filled dam 700 feet long, headworks of
concrete, and a huge canal 67 miles long
and several hundred miles of laterals and
small ditches.
HUNTLEY PROJECT, MONTANA
Up the Yellowstone about 200 miles is
the Huntley project, which was completed
last June. It is located 12 miles east of
Billings, Montana, and embraces 30,000
acres of land, having a general elevation
of 3,000 feet above sea level. The irri-
gable area has been divided into 589
farms of 40 acres each, and about half of
these have already been filed upon. The
project offers unusual advantages for the
practical farmer of small means to secure
a good home, whereon by his own in-
dustry he can secure a comfortable living.
The climate here is delightful and the soil
of exceptional fertility, producing boun-
tiful crops when watered. Cereals and
alfalfa are the principal crops, although
apples, small fruits, and garden vege-
tables do well. On account of the fine
range country surrounding the project,
alfalfa will always be a staple product.
It produces about five tons to the acre at
present and is worth $5 a ton in the stack.
A sugar-beet factory is now in operation
at Billings and the farmers are increasing;
HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT
253
their acreage in this crop, as it is very
profitable. Unusual facilities for trans-
porting crops to the large markets are
afforded by two lines of transcontinental
railroads, the Northern Pacific and the
Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, which
traverse this tract. No farm is more than
three miles from a shipping point. There
are eight new towns on this project at
intervals of about 5 miles along the two
lines of railroad, and town lots are now
offered for sale by the government at
reasonable prices.
SUN RIVER PROJECT, MONTANA
Xot far from the thriving city of Great
Falls, Montana, the first unit of the Sun
River project will be opened to settlers on
May 7. This project, when completed,
will be one of the largest undertaken by
the government, irrigating nearly 256,000
acres, or considerably more than the cul-
tivated acreage of Rhode Island. An in-
teresting feature in connection with this
project is the proposition of the engineers
to augment the water supply by taking
water from the streams now flowing into
the Pacific Ocean through a gap in the
continental divide to a watershed which
drains into the Atlantic Ocean. The Sun
River Valley proper is about 70 miles
long and from I to 5 miles wide. The
unit to be opened in Mav is the abandoned
Fort Shaw Military Reservation, which
contains about 200 8o-acre farms.
On this project the rural settlement
plan of the Reclamation Service will be
carried out, and there will be a village
about every six miles. The soil is a
warm, sandy loam covered with buffalo
grass, gramma, and wheat grass. All
the crops which can be grown in the
northern countries can be raised in this
section. The principal crops will be
largely alfalfa, sugar-beets, and potatoes.
MILK RIVER PROJECT, MONTANA
In northern Montana the Milk River
project, by reason of the international
character of the streams to be diverted,
has attracted a great deal of attention.
The irrigable area in the valley of Milk
River is greater than the water supply,
and the engineers propose to store water
now flowing into Hudson Bay to aug-
ment the insufficient flow of Milk River,,
a tributary of the Missouri. Nearly
250,000 acres are involved in this project.
The valley has a soil of sandy loam wett
adapted to raising all the products of the
north temperate zone. The construction
of the necessary dams and canals will
require several years. Milk River Val-
ley is tributary to the Great Northern-
Railroad.
SI1OSIIONIC PROJECT, WYOMING
On the northern border of Wyoming,,
in a region of exceedingly rough country,
the government is building the highest
masonry dam in the world. This struc-
ture, which will rise 310 feet above
its foundation, blocks a very narrow
gorge. It will be 108 feet thick on the
bottom and only 175 feet long on top.
We might get a better conception of the
enormous height of this dam if we com-
pared it with the height of some familiar
building. Take, for instance, the Flatiron-
building, in New York. Placed side by
side, the Shoshone dam would rise one
story higher.
The work here is difficult and dan-
gerous. Workmen are lowered into the
canyon, the walls of which are hun-
dreds of feet high, and, with ropes about
their bodies as they work, put in the drill
holes for blasting. Before work could
be begun on this structure it was neces-
sary for the Reclamation Service to build
a road 8 miles in length to get into the
canyon. This road was cut for the most
of the distance from the solid walls of
rock. The dam will create behind it the
largest lake in the State of Wyoming,,
with a superficial area of 10 square miles
and an average depth of 7° feet-
Twelve miles below the Shoshone dam
a diversion dam is being built in the river
which will turn the stream into a tunnel
3*4 miles in length, connected at the other
end by a large canal which carries the
water out upon 100,000 acres of choice
land. A portion of this area will be
watered next spring, and is opened to
settlement at this time to bona fide citi-
254 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
\
HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT
255
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ix GUNNISON CANYON: UNCOMPAHGRE PROJECT, COLORADO (SEE PAGE 263)
HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT
257
zens of the United States. The irrigable
lands are reached by the Chicago, Bur-
lington and Quincy Railway.
NORTH PLATTE PROJECT
In southern Wyoming another large
work is well under way. The structure
known as the Pathfinder dam is being
erected in a narrow canyon of the North
Platte River at the identical point where
General John C. Fremont, the noted ex-
plorer, nearly lost his life while attempt-
ing to get through in a boat. This struc-
ture will be 215 feet high and will create
an enormous reservoir with a storage
capacity of 1,025,000 acre-feet, or enough
water to cover 1,025,000 acres a foot
deep. To better appreciate the quantity
of water in this reservoir it should be un-
derstood that it is sufficiently capacious
to hold back the greatest flood ever
known in this turbulent stream. In con-
nection with this dam and reservoir the
government has built a large canal 95
miles in length to carry the waters onto
lands in Wyoming and Nebraska.
Owing to the rough country along the
canal route, several large concrete via-
ducts were constructed and for several
miles the canal is lined with cement. The
irrigable lands are tributary to the Chi-
cago and Northwestern, Chicago, Bur-
lington and Quincy, and the Union Pa-
cific Railway systems.
BELLE FOURCHE PROJECT, SOUTH DAKOTA
Northeast of the Black Hills, in South
Dakota, lies the beautiful valley of the
Belle Fourche, embracing several hun-
dred thousand acres of exceedingly
fertile land. In this valley the Reclama-
tion Service has nearly completed a great
work for the irrigation of 100,000 acres.
By means of a concrete diversion dam
the entire flow of the Belle Fourche River
will be diverted into an inlet canal 6l/2
miles in length and large enough to carry
the minimum flow of the Potomac River
at Point of Rocks. This canal turns the
water into a natural depression between
two hills. This depression is blocked by
one of the largest earthei. embankments
in the world, a structure more than a
mile in length and 115 feet in maximum
height. The reservoir thus formed has a
storage capacity of 203,770 acre-feet, and
forms the largest lake in the State of
South Dakota.
Home-seekers have been pouring into
this valley for the last two years, and
nearly all of the public land is now occu-
pied by settlers who are awaiting the
completion of the works. The towns in
the valleys have more than doubled in
population since the work began. There
are opportunities for home-seekers to se-
cure land from private owners whose
holdings are in excess of the requirements
of the Reclamation Act. The principal
markets for the products of this valley
are the mining towns in the Black Hills,
the Twin Cities, also Omaha and Chicago,
which are reached by the Chicago and
Northwestern and Chicago, Burlington
and Quincy railways. Back of the irri-
gated country is a vast area of public
lands which is available for ranging
cattle and sheep. The principal products
will be alfalfa, cereals, vegetables, and the
hardy fruits.
GARDEN CITY PROJECT, KANSAS
In southwestern Kansas the Garden
City Project, although embracing only
8,000 acres, is relatively one of the im-
portant government works in the Plains
region. Owing to the numerous novel
features involved in its construction, the
project has attracted much attention. It
is believed that the successful initiation of
this system will encourage private capital
to take up work in other parts of the
Arkansas Valley and elsewhere on the
Great Plains.
As the Arkansas River could not be de-
pended upon to supply water to gravity
canals, the engineers devised a scheme to
utilize the underflow. About 300 wells
were sunk, the combined length of which
exceeds 4 miles. These wells are in
groups of 12 each and vary from 12 to
15 inches in diameter. Each group will
be operated by its own pumping plant,
and all pumps will be operated by elec-
tricity generated in a central power
station. The water from the wells will be
258
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
lifted into a concrete-lined conduit, which
discharges into the main canal. During
the irrigation season this leviathan pump-
ing plant will lift 30,000 acre-feet, or
about 11,000,000,000 gallons.
The value of land in this part of
Kansas, in its natural condition, varies
from $5 to $15 per acre. When re-
claimed by irrigation it is easily worth
from $100 to $150 per acre. The prin-
cipal crops are sugar-beets and alfalfa,
considerable quantities of which are al-
ready under cultivation. Apples and
melons are especially profitable crops
when irrigated. This section is tributary
to the Santa Fe system.
NEW MEXICO PROJECTS
There are three national projects in the
Territory of New Mexico, two of which,
the Carlsbad and Hondo, are practically
completed and will water 30,000 acres
this season.
The Hondo Project provides for diver-
sion and storage of the flood waters from
Hondo River, a tributary of the Pecos,
and will reclaim 10,000 acres of land in
the vicinity of Roswell. No public land
is watered by this project, but lands in
private ownership are for sale at reason-
able prices.
The Carlsbad Project is located on the
Pecos River, in southeastern New Mex-
ico, on the Santa Fe system. The entire
acreage is in private ownership, but sev-
eral thousand acres are included in ex-
cess holdings and must be disposed of to
farmers who will purchase water-rights
under the government system. The price
of land varies from $20 to $60 per acre.
The climate is mild. In winter the
temperature during the day is seldom be-
low freezing. The summer temperature
seldom goes above 100 degrees and the
nights are always pleasant.
The soil is a light, sandy alluvium and
very fertile. The chief crops in the val-
ley are peaches, pears, apples, cherries,
small fruits, alfalfa, cotton, sweet pota-
toes, celery, and garden truck. Five
crops of alfalfa are grown each year,
yielding a total of 5 to 8 tons per acre.
Fruits, cotton, and alfalfa are the most
profitable crops, and fodder-corn, caner
and milo-maize yield good forage crops.
Stock-raising is profitable, owing to ex-
tensive range lands to the east and west.
There is a good market for horses and
mules at Carlsbad, and hay is always in
demand here and at other points in the
valley. Cotton, after being ginned, is-
shipped to Houston or Galveston,
Kansas City, Wichita, El Paso, Fort
Worth, etc., afford markets for all other
excess supplies. The Pecos Valley is a
good winter feeding center for range
stock.
Cotton gins, cotton-seed oil and oil-
cake factories, and canneries with ad-
junct machinery for the manufacure of
denatured alcohol are needed in the val-
ley. There are at present water-power
plants at Carlsbad and at a point five
miles below, and there is room for addi-
tional plants further down stream.
The Rio Grande Project involves the
construction of a storage dam 255 feet
high, opposite Eagle, New Mexico, across
the Rio Grande, which will form a reser-
voir 175 feet deep at its lower end and
40 miles long, with a storage capacity of
2,000,000 acre-feet, for the irrigation of
180,000 acres of land in New Mexico,
Texas, and Mexico.
The Leasburg Diversion, which is a
part of the Rio Grande project, consists
of a low, 6oo-foot concrete diversion damr
with pier, embankment, and sluice-gates,,
head-wier and head-gates. In connection
with the diversion dam 6 miles of full-
sized canal were constructed to connect
with the old Las Cruces Canal. Con-
struction was begun November 27, 1906,
and water will be supplied to 10,000 acres
this summer. The valley has splendid
railroad facilities and contains many
thriving cities and towns, of which El
Paso, Texas, is the metropolis.
OUR INLAND EMPIRE
Beyond the Rocky Mountains lies the
true desert, a land of mysterious silence ;
a land of potential greatness, awaiting
the magic kiss of canal-borne water tO'
wake to teeming fecundity. It is often
called the inland empire.
HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT
259
RAISING HOGS IN THF, KLAMATH VALLEY I KLAMATH PROJECT, OREGON (SEE
PAGE 267)
In many parts of it Nature has placed
in juxtaposition all the natural elements
except rainfall required for a fruitful,
prosperous country. Its climate is health-
ful and salubrious ; its valleys and plains
possess a soil of inexhaustible fertility,
and from the forest-clad mountains, with
summits in regions of perpetual snow,
countless streams rush downward to both
oceans or flow into desert sinks and there
evaporate. How to overcome the absence
of moisture from the clouds and thus
bring the region to its proper state of de-
velopment is today a problem of para-
mount importance. Its successful solu-
tion wrill provide a safety valve against
the impending dangers of congestion in
the cities of the East.
The future of our desert empire is. in
a measure, predicated by the marvelous
achievements of the pioneers. With a
courage born of conviction and fostered
by the hope which dwells perennial in
the breast of the Argonaut of the sage-
brush country, they have, within the past
few years, wrested from a region long
regarded as absolutely worthless a crop-
producing, home-supporting area of in-
exhaustible fertility, greater in extent
than the cultivated lands in Massachu-
setts, Connecticut, Delaware, New Hamp-
shire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and
Vermont, and capable of supporting a
larger rural population. More than
$120,000,000 have been expended in ir-
rigation works in the West, and 70,000
miles of canals now carry the life-giving
waters to 10,000,000 acres, which each
year produce crops valued at more than
$250,000,000.
As good American citizens, we owe it
to ourselves to extend our knowledge of
this splendid country. There is an in-
spiration in the breadth and vastness
of this sleeping empire in the West, and
a sublimity in the lofty mountains whose
summits are clothed in perpetual snow.
One breathes optimism and grows in
mental breadth and strength in contem-
plating scenery which has no counterpart
in the world.
The economic value of national irri-
260 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT
26!
262 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
YAKIMA MAIDEN PICKING HOPS I YAKIMA PROJECT, WASHINGTON
HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT
263
gation cannot be measured in dollars
and cents. The desert made habitable
offers the boon of health to him who
erects his dwelling upon it. You cannot
fix the possibilities of this land of silence
and sunshine. We know that the influ-
ence of its far-flung horizons and its true
perspective are potential in character-
molding and building. Instead of the
dead level of mediocrity, which prevails
in modern city life, the' desert offers the
uplift of unmeasured distances, the per-
petual sunshine, and the individual home,
with the broader freedom of action which
comes with life in the open. There is a
constant inspiration to industry, a stim-
ulation to endeavor, in the superabundant
life which springs from the bosom of the
desert when water is applied. The trans-
formation which follows irrigation is so
remarkable that we are prone to believe
Aladdin and his lamp have really ap-
peared.
MINIDOKA PROJECT, IDAHO
Three years ago last July I camped for
the night on the banks of the Snake
River, in southern Idaho. Save for our
campfire there was no sign of human
habitation within 30 miles, only a vast
sage-brush plain, rimmed on every side
by the horizon. It was a night to remem-
ber. Over us spread a star-gemmed can-
opy; around us the embers of a sage-
brush fire shed their glow. In the near
distance the doleful wailing of the skulk-
ing coyote sent a chilly feeling up and
down the spine.
A weather-tanned engineer in faded
khaki sitting beside me drew rough plans
in the sand, and I listened, interested, but
doubting, while he pictured the future of
this dusty plain. That engineer's plans
found favor in Washington, and in two
months actual work of construction be-
gan. An army of men came upon the
field and straightway took that river and
blocked it with a wonderful dam ; then
they led it into 130 miles of great canals
and i go miles of ditches, and spread it
over 85,000 acres of land.
Attracted by the signs of industry, set-
tlers poured in and every 40 or 80 acres
of that vast area was taken up. Houses
began to dot the plain and a railroad 100
miles long, a branch of the Oregon Short
Line, was built through the center
of the tract. Three new towns sprang
up as if by magic. On the site of our
camp a school-house stands which opened
last year with 74 pupils. Today 1,400
families are living on farms and a thou-
sand people are living in towns where a
trifle over three years ago the eye met
nothing but dust and desolation.
The Minidoka Project furnishes in-
dubitable evidence that a better invest-
ment was never made by a government
since the world began than national irri-
gation. President Roosevelt said, "No
part of this nation can be benefited with-
out a reflex benefit to the other part." In
this one project we find the proof of this
statement, for the 1,400 families who are
at work in that desert valley in Idaho
today are furnishing a market for end-
less quantities of manufactured articles,
the bulk of which are Eastern made.
PAYETTE-BOISE PROJECT, IDAHO
The Payette-Boise Project will reclaim
372,000 acres of land in the fertile val-
leys of the Payette, Boise, and Snake
rivers, in southwestern Idaho, which are
tributary to the Oregon Short Line, the
Boise, Nampa and Owyhee, and the
Idaho Northern railroads. The lands are
in Ada, Canyon, and Owyhee counties,
and are generally smooth, with gentle
slopes. Construction work is well under
way and many settlers have already taken
up their homesteads.
The valleys are the best populated in
the state. The citizens came largely from
the middle West and are prosperous and
progressive. With superior market and
transportation facilities, with soil and
climate adapted to diversified and inten-
sive farming, this section is destined to
become one of the most densely ponulated
agricultural regions in the Northwest.
UNCOMPAHGRE PROJECT, COLORADO
In southwestern Colorado the most
spectacular project of the government is
nearing completion. In this region two
264
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
streams, the Uncompahgre and the Gun-
nison, flow in nearly parallel courses
about 10 miles apart and separated by a
mountain range 2,000 feet high. The
Uncompahgre flows through a broad val-
ley containing several hundred thousand
acres of fertile land. Its volume is suffi-
cient for the irrigation of only a small
part of the irrigable area. On the other
hand, the Gunnison River, a stream of
much larger discharge, flows in a pro-
found canyon and in its valley there is no
considerable area of land to be watered.
To augment the insufficient flow of the
first stream the greatest underground
waterway in the world is being con-
structed— a tunnel 6 miles long, with a
cross-section iol/2 by 12 feet, under a
mountain 2,000 feet. It will bring into
the valley a part of the waters of the
Gunnison River. The history of this
project is replete with danger, daring,
and heroism, and the men who initiated
this work and those who have carried it
forward furnish proof enough that all
of Uncle Sam's heroes do not wear uni-
forms.
The topographers who followed to
complete the original survey encountered
almost unheard of trials. Many times it
was necessary to lower them by ropes
hundreds of feet into the canyon. The
location for the tunnel was determined at
a point where the canyon was more than
a half mile deep. It was necessary then
to construct a road into this frightful
gorge, a remarkable road, 16 miles long,
with grades out of the canyon 23 per
cent in places. Heavy machinery was
brought in and a power plant installed.
The difficulties encountered have tried
the heart of those engaged upon the
work. Gas, cave-ins, and subterranean
springs have all interposed obstacles re-
quiring the utmost care in the prosecu-
tion of the work. At frequent intervals
heavy flows of water have been encoun-
tered. This has required the installation
of complete pumping facilities. At the
present time pumps are discharging
about 250,000 gallons per 24-hour day,
and the quantity pumped has been as high
as 750,000 gallons during the same pe-
riod. More than four miles of the tunnel
have been excavated to date. While the
tunnel work was going on many miles
of canals were dug, some of which were
in exceedingly unfavorable country and
necessitated cement lining.
Irrigation from this project will begin
in 1909, and 140,000 acres of land, much
of which is adapted to the growing of
deciduous fruits, will be ready for settle-
ment. The Denver and Rio Grande
Railway traverses this section.
STRAWBERRY VALLEY PROJECT, UTAH
This project provides for the irrigation
of about 60,000 acres of land in central
Utah, situated from 5 to 15 miles south
of Provo, and on the eastern shore of
Utah Lake. Water supply will be re-
ceived from a storage reservoir to be built
on Strawberry River/about 30 miles east
of the irrigable area. By means of a tun-
nel 35/2 miles long stored waters will be
carried under the divide and emptied into
Spanish Fork, from which a canal from
1 8 to 20 miles long will convey them to
the irrigable area. The lands have a
mean elevation of 4,500 feet.
YAKIMA VALLEY PROJECTS, WASHINGTON
On the eastern side of the Cascades, in
Washington, are a succession of valleys
in the drainage of the Yakima River.
Comprehensive plans have been worked
out by the Reclamation Service and con-
struction is well under way for the re-
clamation of the largest project yet un-
dertaken. The irrigable area is nearl\r
a half million acres and the cost will prob-
ably exceed $15,000,000. The work is
being taken up in divisions, each involv-
ing the irrigation of specified areas.
Storage is provided by erecting dams
at the outlets of several mountain lakes,
the capacity of which will total 804,000
acre-feet. On the Sunnyside Unit the
government purchased a large canal, en-
larged it and rebuilt the diversion dam in
the Yakima. Last year this system sup-
plied 40,000 acres, and a crop census
showed that the yields amounted to
$2,000,000 or $50 per acre.
No section of the United States
HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT
more generous returns for the labor em-
ployed than the Yakima Valley. I have
never dared to tell Easterners what I
really know to be true about the crop
yields. Some of the views will give you
an idea of the intensive farming prac-
ticed there.
Among the wealth producers the apple
orchards take a high rank. Full-bearing
orchards produce frequently from $300
to $1,200 per acre annually. It can be
stated that $300 is less than the average
for all well-kept orchards. The fruit
grown here is attractive, sound, and ships
well. Its market is New York and
Europe, and the commission men are so
eager for the crop that it is often con-
tracted for in advance. Orchard lands
sell for from $300 to $2,000 per acre, de-
pending on location and condition of
trees. The pear crop is very profitable,
and peaches and grapes do well. A large
area is in hops, and the yields here are so
generous that I am told Yakima is driving
New York out of the hop-growing
business.
The Yakima Indians find employment
in the hop fields during the picking sea-
son, and usually camp just outside the
fields. Alfalfa is another money-maker,
producing from 6 to 8 tons per acre,
worth on an average of $5 per ton in the
stack. In 1907 the Yakima Valley
shipped fruit to the value of $1,125,000.
Its hay crop was worth $2,000,000; po-
tatoes, $250,000; onions, $50,000, and
hops, $200,000, a total of farm products
of $3,625,000. Sixty-five thousand cattle
and 20,000 sheep were ranged and fed
in this valley in 1907, valued at about
$2,000,000.
Ten and 20 acre farms are common in
this valley, and this has brought about
compact rural settlements along the irriga-
tion canals. In turn there has followed a
gradual improvement in social conditions,
with the elimination of the isolation of
farm life, which has in itself proven such
an important factor in swinging the pen-
dulum of population from the farm to the
town. The luxuries of town life are en-
joyed in a measure by the farmer, who at
the same time lives a life of freedom in
the open.
When the works on this section are
completed the Yakima Valley will be-
come one of the show places of the coun-
try. Over a greater portion of the ir-
rigable area the farms will not exceed 20
acres in area, and we may look for a pop-
ulation of 250,000 in this favored region
in the not distant future. Fully devel-
oped, the taxable property should have a
value of not less than $70,000,000, mak-
ing it one of the richest agricultural dis-
tricts in the world.
The area which can be reclaimed is
nearly double that which is now irrigated
in Southern California. A splendid part
of the life in the Yakima Valley is that
one can live out of doors so much of the
year. The same share of clear skies and
dry air that makes Southern California so
attractive is enjoyed in Washington. The
valley is on the main line of the Northern
Pacific and the new line of the Chicago,
Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway now
building.
OKANOGAN PROJECT, WASHINGTON
The Okanogan country lies about half
in British Columbia and half in the
United States. Owing to its remarkable
climate this valley has been called the
California of the Northwest. The Rec-
lamation Service has nearly completed
an interesting engineering work here to
reclaim 8,000 acres. The land is very
fertile and, owing to the exceptionally
favorable climate, a wide variety of
products, many of which are high priced,
are produced. Frost has never injured
the fruit in the valley in which this work
is located, and there has never been a
failure with apples, peaches, plums,
prunes, apricots, pears, cherries, necta-
rines, grapes, and all the varieties of
small berries grown in the United States.
The nearest railway town is Wenatchee.
on the Great Northern, from which place
steamboats ply daily up the Columbia to
Brewster, and thence by stage 28 miles
to Okanogan, a town of 400 inhabitants.
UMATILLA PROJECT, OREGON
The Umatilla project, in northeastern
Oregon, when compared in area with
manv others now under construction,
266 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT
267
might be regarded as one of the lesser
works, but when studied as to its possible
future development it easily takes a prom-
inent place among the most favorable and
attractive agricultural regions in the
West.
Xo expert who has investigated this
wonderful land of sunshine has yet dared
to place a limit upon its agricultural pos-
sibilities. Nature here gives the maxi-
mum return for the minimum of labor.
The irrigable lands lie in rolling
benches along the Columbia and between
it and the Umatilla. The diversity of
crops, many of which are high priced,
made possible by the exceptionally favor-
able conditions of soil and climate, predi-
cate small farms intensively cultivated,
providing homes for an intelligent and
>rosperous husbandry. The promise of a
:ompact community of scientific agri-
culturists in this valley is certain of ful-
fillment in the near future. From the
nature of the crops and the character of
the people who will grow them it re-
quires no particular gift of prophecy to
predict the establishment in this valley of
rural settlement which will be likened
•unto many of those nearly ideal commu-
nities which have grown up under meth-
ods of intensive irrigation in Southern
California.
The water supply is the flood flow of
the Umatilla, which is stored in a reser-
voir created by constructing an earthen
•embankment nearly 100 feet in height
and one-half mile long. Owins^ to the
•exceedingly porous character of the soil,
many of the canals are lined with cement.
The line of the Oregon Railroad and
Navigation Company passes through the
irrigated area.
TRUCKEE-CARSON PROJECT, NEVADA
On the western border of the Great
Interior Basin in the bed of ancient Lake
Lahontan, in Nevada, an important work
is now completed to irrigate 160,000
•acres. This is the dryest part of the
United States except Death Valley, and
was called "Forty Mile Desert'' by the
•gold hunters who crossed it en route to
California. The old overland trail can
still be traced across the desert, and we
come upon many melancholy evidences
of desert tragedies, enacted in the early
fifties. In excavating canals our great
shovels have encountered the bones of
men and horses who perished of thirst.
We know now that much of their suffer-
ing was unnecessary. There is plenty <>f
good water not far below the surface of
the sands. In fact, the grave-diggers, if
they had gone a few feet deeper, would
have been able to satisfy their own thirst.
The irrigation works in this valley in a
way have changed physical geography.
The Truckee River is lifted from its bed
by a huge dam 30 feet high, which turns
the waters into a broad and deep canal
31 miles long and lined with cement.
Truckee River is now flowing into Carson
River. Another dam in Carson River
diverts the combined flow of both streams
upon the desert, which has already begun
to blossom. Eight hundred farms are
now awaiting settlers here. The terms
are easy and the market for farm pro-
ducts is the best in the West. You reach
this valley on the Southern Pacific Rail-
way.
KLAMATH PROJECT, OREGON-CALIFORNIA
The Klamath Project contemplates the
reclamation of about 190,000 acres of
land situated in Klamath county, Oregon,
and Modoc and Siskiyou counties, Cali-
fornia. The plans involve, in addition to
the irrigation of the valley lands, the
reclamation by drainage and future irri-
gation of a portion of the Lower Klamath
and Tule lakes, lands which are now
either swamp or lake bottoms. Prac-
tically all the uplands, which include the
greater part of the project, are held in
private ownership, mostly in large hold-
ings, which, under the terms of the Rec-
lamation Act, must be subdivided into
tracts of not to exceed I'D acres. The
public lands under the project, which in-
clude nearly all of the lake and swamp
areas, are at present withdrawn from
entry. When these lands are restored to
entry, homesteaders may file applications
for available public lands.
Construction work on the first 9 miles
268
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
of the main canal and the laterals there-
under was begun in March, 1906, and
completed in 1907. From this canal
water will be delivered to from 12,000
to 15,000 acres during the irrigation
season of 1908. The lands under the
project are of good quality. The prin-
cipal crops grown are alfalfa, wheat,
oats, barley, rye, vegetables, and some
deciduous fruits. A few experiments in
sugar-beet culture show that it is prob-
able this crop can be successfully grown.
The principal town of the valley is Kla-
math Falls, located on Link River about
one mile below the lower end of Upper
Klamath Lake. Other towns in the valley
are Merrill, situated near Tule Lake, and
Bonanza, situated on Lost River, within
the so-called "upper project." The Cali-
fornia and Northeastern Railway is now
under construction to Klamath Falls.
YUM A PROJECT
President Roosevelt is responsible in a
measure for the present widespread in-
terest in the delta of the Colorado River,
having made it the subject of a special
message to Congress last session. This
region has been likened unto the wonder-
ful valley of the Nile, which it so greatly
resembles in soil, crops, and climate. The
world is familiar with the catastrophe
which threatened for a time to destroy a
very large area in the lower valley, but
few people appreciate the almost super-
human engineering feat by which this
powerful stream was forced back into its
old channel. This was accomplished by
the engineers of a great railroad com-
pany, which placed at their disposal vast
sums of money and almost the entire
equipment of the system. Since the river
was controlled the government work at
Yuma and above has progressed rapidly.
The great weir at Laguna is now within
700 feet of closing the river, and during
low-water stage this year heroic efforts
will be made to complete this structure.
The Laguna dam is interesting, as it is
the first structure of this kind to be
erected in the United States. It is similar
to several weirs built bv the English engi-
neers in Egypt and India.
The project contemplates the reclama-
tion of about 100,000 acres in Arizona
and California. These lands are without
question the most valuable in the country
when watered. President Roosevelt, in
his message to Congress, said : "The most
conservative estimate after full develop-
ment must place the gross production
from this land at not less than $100 per
acre per year, every 10 acres of which
will support a family when under inten-
sive cultivation. Much of the land will
be worth from $500 to $1,500 per acre to
individual holders." Yuma, the principal
city in this section, is on the Southern
Pacific Railway.
A VANISHED RACE
A peculiar interest attaches to our far
Southwest, for the reason principally that
long before the first word of our Nation's
history was inscribed a semi-civilized
people dwelt there and cultivated its fer-
tile soil. Impenetrable mystery envelopes
the age in which they lived. With four
centuries of our own records to scan, sup-
plemented by seven centuries of Moki
traditions, the veil of the past thus parted
throws no ray of light upon this ancient
race. Their wonderful dwellings, perched
eyrie-like in the deep canyons, and the
long lines of their canals, choked with
the wind-swept drift of centuries, give
mute and pathetic evidence of their archi-
tectural and engineering skill.
Frowning battlements overlooking the
desert, crumbling slowly into dust with
the weight of ages, breathe of war and
romance in an age forgotten. These
monster structures, containing millions of
pieces of stone, and the miles of canals
which embraced whole valleys, tell of a
thrifty home-loving husbandry. In these
voiceless and vacant ruins we may almost
read the story of Egypt of the scriptures^
of another people toiling under the des-
ert's brazen skies, wearily and painfully
executing the commands of another
Pharaoh.
What Fate overtook them we shall
never know. Yet among these castled
cliffs we know that men have lived and
died, and youths and maidens have re-
HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT
269
270 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
HOME-MAKING BY THK GOVERNMENT
271
BALED HAY STORAGE BUILDING AT THE CHANDLER RANCH, 6 MILES SOUTH OF MESA,
ARIZONA. WATER IS SUPPLIED FOR THE IRRIGATION QF THIS HAY BY PUMPING
PLANTS: SALT RIVER PROJECT, ARIZONA
peated, o'er and o'er, the old, sweet story.
We confess to a feeling of sadness as we
view these structures erected in an age
unknown — structures revealing order and
intelligence, craftsmanship and patience,
and rivalling in some degree the work of
modern engineers. The Cheltro Palace is
449 feet long, 250 feet wide, and 4 stories
high. Along three sides of it extends a
wall 950 feet long and 40 feet in height.
The masonry work in this building and
wall contained more than 30,000,000
pieces of stone. All had to be quarried,
then carried up steep ladders in baskets
on the backs of men before being placed
in position. Considering the primitive
stone implements used and the magnitude
of this structure, the time and labor re-
quired to construct this building make it
the most famous and stupendous work of
our country.
SALT RIVER PROJECT, ARIZONA
Let us in fancy visit this land of mys-
tery, of lost races and hoary ruins, a land
whose civilization was old perhaps when
Caesar sat upon his throne. Starting
from the charming city of Phcenix, in the
heart of Salt River Valley, let us take a
journey to the wonderful engineering
works of this project. Leaving Phcenix
by train, the Santa Fe or Southern
Pacific railways, it is only a short ride to
Tempe, where we may profitably pause
a moment or two to get a broad view of
the valley from the summit of the high
butte just at the edge of the town. We
note a peculiarity here as we gaze upon
the cultivated fields. There are no farm-
houses on the farms. Here we find a
return to the communal systen of farm
life, which was typical in the days of the
cliff-dwellers and later in those of the
Pueblo Indians. The farmer lives in
town and goes to and from his small
farm each day. Here at last the farmer's
wife has her innings. She has the society
of her neighbors, her children have
graded schools ; the church and library
are at hand. There is no isolation, no
272
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
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HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT
273
274 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
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HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT
275
276 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
THE: TOP OF FISH CREEK HILL, ARIZONA, ON THE MESA AND ROOSEVELT STAGE ROAD,
WHICH WAS BUILT BY THE GOVERNMENT I SALT RIVER PROJECT,
ARIZONA (SEE PAGE 2/8)
HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT
277
loneliness. We find under these condi-
tions also that there is no strong tendency
on the part of the young men and women
to drift to the crowded cities.
From Tempe to Mesa is another short
ride by rail through a well-irrigated sec-
tion. Leaving Mesa in the early morn-
ing, when the air is fresh and sweet with
the perfume of countless blossoms, we
journey for a distance of 8 miles through
a region where nature seems to be ever
at work producing varied and wonderful
forms of vegetation. Just beside our
window we note the magnificent date
palm, its broad leaves bending in graceful
curves and shading an abundance of lus-
cious fruit. We are, indeed, in Egypt,
for the date, you remember, was the
bread of the desert. If we doubt, a little
further along we come upon an olive
orchard, and just beyond the almond
trees are in bloom, lending fragrance to
an atmosphere already perfumed.
We pause to observe a large flock of
ostriches wandering over an alfalfa
meadow and rub our eyes to be sure we
are really in our own country. More
familiar to us appear the sleek, fat cattle
standing knee deep in the cool alfalfa.
This alfalfa is a wonderful crop down
here, a veritable farmer's bank account,
frequently yielding 12 tons to an acre per
year, worth from five to ten dollars per
ton.
We linger just a moment to gather a
few oranges from the grove beside the
road, and as we eat we wonder why such
fruit never comes to our tables.
There is such a riot of color about this
cottage that we want to stop long enough
to ask the housewife how she can get
roses to bloom in this wonderful way, but
we have a long journey and we only learn
that most farmers' wives in this valley,
having both time and inclination, delight
in beautifying their homes.
"TH£ LAND THAT GOD FORGOT"
All too quickly we have driven over
this flowery, fruitful vale. With a sud-
denness that is startling we come upon a
scene of death and desolation, where
everything bears mute evidence of a ter-
rible struggle for life. It is the land some
one called "The Land that God Forgot."
Everything that grows is covered with a
thorn; everything that crawls is deadly.
It is a topsy-turvy wonderland. We may
not drink of the waters of the desert
stream, for they are salty. In this strange
region they dig for wood and climb for
water, for the water is found in cup-
shaped pools in the hills and the wood is
the big root of the mesquite.
For 20 miles our road, a government
road, stretches across the desert and we
begin to feel some of its compelling and
pervasive mystery. There is a beauty and
charm about it, too, which cannot be de-
scribed. The distant buttes are glowing
richly red in the early morning light and
the landscape, some one has said, "sug-
gests a thought of God's original palette
whereon he mixed the colors with which
he brought forth the glories of a south-
west sunset," the opal-tinted morn and
the fairest shades of rose and green and
yellow.
The desert vegetation is interesting.
We come upon the Sahaurra, ihe giant
cactus, the sentinel of the desert, clothed
from base to top with thorns, yet bearing
delicate and waxen yellow blossoms.
Singly and in pairs they grow, some at-
taining a height of 45 feet. Sometimes
we find them in groves. The cliff-dwell-
ers used the heart of this plant for floors
in their houses.
Our first stop in the desert is at Desert
Wells. It remained for our generation
to discover that underneath these burn-
ing sands, and at no great depth, is an
inexhaustible supply of water, fresh and
sweet. At several points along our way
the government has put down these wells
to supply the needs of the thousands of
men and teams constantly crossing the
desert.
Rising straight up from the desert is
a distant range of mountains. They seem
to float above the edge of the level plain,
intangible and unreal, yet transcendently
beautiful in coloring and contour.
As we enter the mountain country
glory after glory of view is presented.
Changeful, charming landscape pano-
278
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ramas are unfolded before us. The colors
illusive and divinely artistic, shift and
change and blend as we gaze in wonder
and amazement.
MOST WONDERFUL HIGHWAY
BUILT BY MAN
We are now entering upon what many
travelers have described as the most won-
derful highway ever made by man. A
great thoroughfare built for 40 miles
through the heart of a rugged range of
mountains and for the most part literally
carved from the living rock. As we go
along note the coloring on the rocks, and
believe me when I tell you the colors
shown are not exaggerated, for it would
be impossible for human artist to dupli-
cate, far less to exaggerate, the colors
which the Divine Hand has put upon
these stones.
I need not tell you that road-building
in a country like this was difficult; that
fact stares you in the face at every point.
When the surveying party reached the top
of Fish Creek Hill the engineer called a
halt. He wanted time to think; and the
problem before him demanded thought.
He looked over the cliff into a blind can-
yon, into which there was not even a
foot trail. A thousand feet sheer below
him he could discover faintly a tiny
stream of water and a few green trees.
How was he going to get there with a
wagon road over which tons and tons
of machinery must be hauled ? A hurried
reconnaissance disclosed the fact that to
go around the canyon meant adding 15
miles to the road. It was not to be
thought of. So he decided to blast a road
down the face of the steep cliff, and it
was done.
It would be simply terrifying to go
over the road today but for the fact that
the government has built it broad and
comfortable, with easy grades and many
safe turnouts, for standing here at the
edge of the road a pebble slipped from
the ringers shoots almost straight down
a thousand feet without stopping.
At one point we get a view of the road
almost to the blind end of the canyon,
and can also see the line of road as it
turns back on the other side. Just before
we make this turn we cross a pretty little
bridge 60 feet above Fish Creek. Down
in the bottom of the canyon we find
Frazier's Road House, a comfortable
little inn, with good beds and a genial
landlord. Here we shall spend the night.
In this canyon, a miniature grand canyon
of the Colorado, we will witness the
golden glory of a sunset whose splendor
will be impressed forever on our mem-
ory. Later we shall sit in the twilight
and watch the stars steal forth in skies
that seem to touch the walls of the can-
yon all around us.
The brooding mystery of the scene and
the witchery of the hour will sink deeply
into our hearts and color our dreams for
many nights hereafter.
In the morning early we make our start
to climb out of the canyon. Another
panorama of- mountains, uncanny buttes,
steep-walled canyons, and narrow val-
leys passes before us. Freakishly shaped
rocks, grotesque and awe-inspiring, tower
above us. What wonder that the Indian
viewed the country with superstition and
awe!
At places we skirt dark chasms. Here
the road has been cut from a rock that is
milk white. Here the mountain-top was
blasted off and the road built from the
river up. Here we have a long swing on
the edge of a profound forge, and as we
pass along we are thankful indeed that
our road is wide and safe.
Higher and higher we climb, every
moment catching glimpses of difficult
problems in road building worked out
successfully. We pass through great
cuts, and here and there the road has been
built up from below with masonry.
THE ROOSEVELT DAM AND OTHER MARVELS
Our road has brought us to the top
of the narrow gorge Salt River has cut
through the mountains, and we look down
upon one of the world's greatest engi-
neering works in process of construction,
the Roosevelt dam. This wonderful
structure of sandstone and cement will
rise 284 feet above the river. It will be
i, 080 feet long on top and 170 feet thick
HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT 279
at the base. Its foundation will cover
one acre of ground.
Placed by the side of a 2O-story build-
ing, it would rise ten feet above it, while
its length on top would be more than two
city blocks. Across its top will be a road-
way 20 feet wide.
By day and by night the dull roar of
dynamite breaks the desert stillness, and
the canyon walls go crashing down to
furnish material for this structure. Great
blocks of sandstone weighing ten tons
each aie swung out on cranes and set in
place.
When night comes myriads of electric
lights burst forth, weirdly illuminating
a busy army of toilers, working gnome-
like in a shadowy canyon. It is a wond-
rous scene, unreal, awesome, and in-
spiring.
Every stone that is laid in that narrow
arch, which is to curb that foaming river,
brings nearer and nearer the day when
the town of Roosevelt shall vanish be-
neath an inland sea.
When those massive gates of iron in
the big dam, weighing 60,000 pounds, are
closed, a rising flood will cover the site
of the city 220 feet deep. The people
knew it was a doomed city when they
built it, but this did not deter them. They
built stores and dwellings, a school-house
and a church, and brought water from
distant mountain springs.
This government work is interesting
not only to the engineer, but also to the
layman. It is located in a valley which
has been the abode of three races, one of
which lived here when Rome was young.
Two of those wonderful cliff-dwellings
are almost in sight of the modern struc-
ture that is soon to submerge some of
the lands which formerly produced their
harvests.
Owing to the remoteness from trans-
portation, the government engineer had
to engage in many enterprises. He built
roads to get machinery in. He sawed
millions of feet of lumber from the na-
tional forests nearby. He turned farmer
and raised his own produce, his hay, pork,
beef, and chickens. In the construction
of the dam 240,000 barrels of cement are
required and the lowest bid from the
cement manufacturers was prohibitive.
I his engineer, undaunted, found a lime-
stone ledge near the dam and proceeded
to erect a cement mill. It has already
turned out 80,000 barrels of cement at a
cost far below the lowest bid.
Power was essential, so a dam was
built 1 6 miles upstream, turning a part
of the river into a power canal. The
canal, having less grade than the river,
appears to carry the water uphill.
A part of it is lined with cement. It
crosses rough country in viaducts that
make us think of the works of ancient
Rome. Near the dam site it passes
through a tunnel and downward into the
mountain, a drop of 220 feet. The water
falls upon the turbines located in a unique
power-house, a niche in the canyon walls,
and generates 4,400 horse-power. The
power is utilized by the contractor, it
operates the cement plant, the electric-
light plant, and is used for other pur-
poses.
THE; APACHE LABORERS
On the way to the saw-mills we pass
a number of salt caves, each of wonderful
beauty. The salt is deposited by salt
springs. It is from these springs that the
river takes its name, for the waters of
Salt River are too salty to drink, but for-
tunately not salty enough to be injurious
when used for irrigation.
The most difficult problem for the engi-
neer to solve was the labor question. The
common laborer did not like the job,
chiefly, it is said, because he could not
spend his money fast enough. This is a
government reservation; there are no
saloons ; no gambling is permitted. There
are no towns nearer than 60 miles, so
he did not look with favor on the work.
The real worth of the engineer came out
when he turned missionary and held a
pow-wow with the Apache Indians, who
have lived in the basin for generations.
It seems incredible, yet it is nevertheless
true, he succeeded in inducing several
hundred of them to go on the pay-roll,
and, largely through their labors, the
wonderful highway we just crossed over
was built.
Some of the Apaches developed. Sev-
280 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERN
MENT
28l
THE RAISING OF GRAPHS IN THE SALT RIVER VALLEY, NEAR MESA, ARIZONA
With proper irrigation in this section of the Southwest almost any kind of fruit can he suc-
cessfully and profitably raised. Grapes do very well in this valley
282 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ALMOND ORCHARD IN BLOOM IN THE SALT RIVER VALLEY, ARIZONA I SALT RIVER
PROJECT, ARIZONA
HOME-MAKING
GOVERNMENT
DATE;
IN SALT RIVER VALLEY., NEAR MESA, SHOWING THE ENORMOUS CROP OF
DATES ON ONE TREE I SALT RIVER VALLEY PROJECT, ARIZONA
284 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
THE IVY RANCH, NEAR PHCE)NIX, ARIZONA : SAI/T RIVE}R PROJECT, ARIZONA
The bee industry in the Salt River Valley is a very profitable industry, as the climatic
conditions are perfect, and the clover and alfalfa fields, as well as the wild mesquite, affords
good feed for the bees, making this section of the country very well adapted for this business..
HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT
285
eral, starting as common laborers, showed
such industry and ability that they were
promoted to responsible positions, as road
supervisors in charge of their own tribes-
men on difficult road work.
There is something like poetic justice in
the labor of the Indian with pick and
shovel to reclaim a valley he so often
watered with the blood of the white man.
While the braves are working for the
government on the road, in the cement
mill, the brick-yard, and elsewhere, the
squaws in the teepees weave wonderful
baskets, which find ready sale in the camp
and in the valley below.
Sixty miles below Roosevelt another
enormous structure is rapidly nearing
completion. It will divert the stored
waters into canals on each side of the
river which lead it to the fields below.
One of these canals was partly excavated
by the cliff-dwellers, who cut it through
solid rock. Think of the patience and
time they must have expended in a work
like this, when their only implements
were of stone.
Settlers are already erecting their
homes on the desert, and soon we shall
call this the land that God remembered,
for, with water from those distant moun-
tains stored in vast reservoirs and led
through a thousand miles of canals and
ditches, the desert will smile, oases of
green will spring forth, and homes of
beauty and peace will dot the landscape.
TERMS OF SALE OF GOVERNMENT LAND
If the thousands of inquiries which are
addressed to the Statistician of the Rec-
lamation Service, at Washington, D. C.,
can be accepted as any indication, the
West will be the Mecca for hundreds of
home-seekers this spring. Many other
projects of the government which are
ready for irrigation contain large areas
of land for sale by private owners who
are under agreement with the United
States to dispose of their holdings. By
the terms of the Reclamation Law no
farm will contain more than 160 acres.
Every settler must reside upon the land,
and must cultivate it for five years before
he can secure a patent. The homestead
rights of soldiers and sailors are not
abridged by the Reclamation Act. Home-
seekers should have money— how much
depends, of course, upon the settler and
the kind of farming he expects to do.
While there are numerous opportunities
to secure work, the settler with money
and equipment will be able to get his land
in condition for irrigation and will thus
secure an early income from his farm.
A knowledge of irrigation is not ab-
solutely essential. The government will
have a practical farmer on each project
to advise new-comers. On several pro-
jects there are demonstration farms on
which are grown the crops adapted to
that section. During portions of the year
the government will give employment to
settlers in constructing canals, laterals,
and building roads.
SUMMARY OF WORK DONE
A summation of the work of the Rec-
lamation Service for 1907 shows that it
has dug i, 88 1 miles of canals, or nearly
the distance from Washington to Idaho.
Some of these canals carry whole rivers,
like the Truckee River in Nevada, and
the North Platte in Wyoming. The tun-
nels excavated are 56 in number, and
have an aggregate length of 13^2 miles.
The Service has erected 281 large struc-
tures, including the great dams in Ne-
vada and the Minidoka Dam in Idaho, 80
feet high and 650 feet long. It has com-
pleted 1,000 headworks, flumes, etc. It
has built 611 miles of wagon road in
mountainous country and into heretofore
inaccessible regions. It has erected and in
operation 830 miles of telephones. Its
own cement mill has manufactured 80,000
barrels of cement, and the purchased
amount is 403,000 barrels. Its own saw-
mills have cut 3,036,000 feet B. M. of
lumber, and 23,685,000 feet have been
purchased. The surveying parties of the
Service have completed topographic sur-
veys covering 10,9/0 square miles, an
area greater than the combined areas of
Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The
transit lines had a length of 18,900 linear
miles, while the level lines run amount to
24,218 miles, or nearly sufficient to go
around the earth.
The diamond drillings for dam sites
286
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
and canals amount to 66,749 feet, or more
than 12 miles. Today the Service owns
and has at work 1,500 horses and mules.
It operates 9 locomotives, 611 cars, and
23 miles of railroad, 84 gasoline engines
and 70 steam engines. It has constructed
and is operating 5 electric-light plants.
There have been excavated 42,447,000
cubic yards of earth and rock. The
equipment now operated by the Service
on force account work represents an in-
vestment of a million dollars.
This work has been carried on with
the following force : Classified and regis-
tered service, including Washington of-
fice, 1,126; laborers employed directly by
the government, 4,448; laborers em-
ployed by contractors, 10,789, or a total
of all forces of 16,363. The expenditures
now total nearly $1,000,000 per month.
As a result of the operations of the Rec-
lamation Service eight new towns have
been established, 100 miles of branch
railroads have been constructed, and
14,000 people have taken up their resi-
dence in the desert.
The following is a list of the approved
projects on which construction has been
commenced. The table shows the ir-
rigable area of the projects to the points
to which it is expected to carry them
during the four years 1908 to 1911; the
estimated cost to complete the work to
these points ; the estimated expenditures
to the end of the calendar year 1907, and
the percentage of completion December
31, 1907, based upon the ratios of the
expenses to that date to the total esti-
mated cost :
Areas, Cost, Expenditures, etc., on Entire Projects or Such Units as it is Expected to Complete
by ign.
Location.
Project.
Area
in acres.
Estimated
cost.
Estimated
expenditure
to Decem-
ber 31, 1907.
Per
cent of
com-
pletion.
Arizona
Salt River
210,000
$6 300 ooo
$4 ^62 IOO
6q 2
California
Orland .
30,000
I 2OO OOO
1 6 900
I 4
California-Arizona
Yuma
100,000
4,500,000
1,876,700
41.7
Colorado
Uncompahgre
140,000
5 600 ooo
2 900 OOO
si 8
Colorado
Grand Valley
50,000
2 250 ooo
9 7 CQ
Idaho
Minidoka
160,000
4,000,000
1,839,700
46.0
Idaho
Payette-Boise
100,000
•j OOO OOO
i ^81 soo
46 s
Kansas
Garden City
8,000
7 CQ OOO
282 ooo
80 5
Montana
Huntley
30,000
900 ooo
7 06 400
88.4
IVtontana
Milk River including
30,000
I 2OO OOO
•JI4 800
26 2
Montana
Saint Mary.
Sun River
16,000
500 ooo
^44,100
60.0
Nebraska- Wyoming . .
North Platte
110,000
3,850.000
2,797,300
73.0
Nevada
Truckee— Carson
160,000
4 800,000
3,804,600
7Q.2
New Mexico
Carlsbad
20,000
640,000
579,400
8l.5
New Mexico
Hondo
10,000
3,70 ooo
^58,600
97.O
New Mexico
Leasburg
10,000
200,000
167,000
8^.9
New Mexico-Texas ....
Rio Grande
160,000
8,000,000
53,200
.6
North Dakota
Pumping Buford— Tren-
40,000
1,240 ooo
519,600
41 .9
Montana-North Dakota
•Oresron . ,
ton, Williston.
Lower Yellowstone
Umatilla
66,000
18,000
2,700,000
I, IOOVOOO
751,850
765,500
64.9
69.6
Oregon— California .
Klamath
120,000
3,600,000
1,305,080
36.2
South Dakota .
Belle Fourche.
ICOjOOO
3,500,000
1,281,900
36.6
Utah
Strawberry Valley . .
30,000
1,500,000
418,700
27.9
Washington . . ....
Okanogan .
8,000
500,000
372,180
74-4
Washington
Sunnyside. .
40,000
1,600,000
481,180
30.7
Washington
Tieton
24,000
1,500,000
565,420
37-6
Washington
Wapato .... ...
20,000
600,000
5,220
8.7
Shoshone ....
100,000
4,500,000
2,313,990
51.5
1,910,000
$70,000,000
$30,665,570
An average of $36.65 per acre.
HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT 287
D '-
o c
o
< o
£ js
a jy
^ —
w 5
H *
< O
288 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photos by Ellsworth Huntington
THE SEA OF SAND OF THE TAKLA MAKAN DESERT
THE SEA OF SALT OF THE LOP DESERT
MEDIEVAL TALES OF THE LOP BASIN IN
CENTRAL ASIA*
BY ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON
THE modern West discovered the
Lake of Lop-Nor, in Chinese
Turkestan, only thirty years ago,
yet in the Middle Ages Chaucer and his
predecessors seem to have known as
much about that region as the average
man knows today. In recounting the vir-
tues of the Duchess Blanche, Chaucer
speaks of the sweet reasonableness with
which she treated her many lovers. She
did not hold them in suspense, nor for
he sake of proving them did she:
' . . . Sende men into Walakye,
To Pruyse and into Tartarye,
To Alisaundre, ne into Turkye,
And bid him faste, anoon that he
Go hoodless to the Drye See,
And come hoom by the Carrenare."
Apparently the Dry Sea and the Car-
renare were the most inaccessible regions
of which Chaucer had ever heard, more
inaccessible even than Wallachia, Prussia,
Tartary, Turkey, and other erstwhile re-
mote places of which he knew little.
After much discussion by literary critics
as to the geography of the places to
which the Duchess did not send her lov-
ers, Prof. J. L. Lowesf has shown that
there can be little doubt that the Car-
renare is the small salt lake of Kara-Nor,
at the eastern end of Chinese Turkestan.
It lies in the vast "Gobi" or "Desert"
about 200 miles west of the supposed
end of the Great Chinese Wall. As a
matter of fact the remains of the wall
extend not only to, but beyond the lake,
as Dr Stein has recently discovered. Pro-
fessor Lowes concludes further that the
Dry Sea is the great sandy desert of Tak-
lamakan, a few hundred miles to the west
of Kara-Nor. It appears to be either this
or the broad salt plain of the ancient bed
of the Lake of Lop-Nor, between Kara-
Nor and Takla-makan. The terrible
summer heat and winter cold of the whole
region make it indeed a place to which
few people would be so hardy as to go
"hoodless" at any season.
Apparently European knowledge of
Central Asia in Chaucer's day was de-
rived more or less directly from the
famous Letters of Prester John, perhaps
by way of the plagiarized accounts of
Sir John Mandeville. Prester John was
a semi-mythical Christian prince who is
supposed to have lived in Central Asia,
and who sent boastful letters to the Pope
of Rome in the latter half of the twelfth
century. The Letters aroused great in-
terest in Europe for three or four cen-
turies, and many attempts were vainly
made to find the author's country. At
first he »was supposed to live in Asia, as
was probably the case. Hundreds of
years after the writing of the letters, how-
ever, the Portuguese heard of a Christian
king living in Abyssinia, and, supposing
him to be the great Prestor John, sent sev-
eral expeditions to form an alliance with
him. The vaunting boasts of the wide do-
minion and great splendor of Prester
John, whose butler is said to have been a
primate and a king, and his steward an
archbishop and a king, are certainly false.
Nevertheless the Letters contain a large
amount of garbled truth, and their writer
must have known a good deal more about
Central Asia than has generally been
supposed.
He tells us that, "Among other things
which are very wonderful in our country
is a sea of sand without water. For the
sand moves and swells in waves in the
manner of all seas, and is never still.
This sea cannot be crossed either by boat
or by any other method, and of what sort
the land may be beyond it no one can
know. And although water is absent
* Abstract of an address to the National Geographic Society, January 17, 1908.
t Modern Philology, vol. iii, 1905, pp. 1-46.
2QO
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
entirely, nevertheless there are found on
the shore on our side many kinds of fish
more delicious and sweet-tasting than
are ever seen anywhere else." Other
wonders are related of the same region.
For instance, to quote Professor Lowes,
"Into the Sandy Sea itself flows, three
days of the week, a river of stones with-
out water, impassable while its flow con-
tinues. Beyond it lies another river,
whose sands are mere precious stones ; or
sometimes this River of Gems flows
through the Sandy Sea, and is indeed the
Sabbatic River, flowing six days and
resting the seventh, which keeps the ten
tribes of the Children of Israel from
crossing into the land of Prester John.
And in one part of the desert where the
sea lies is a people with round feet, like
horses' hoofs ; and in another part is the
land of Femenye itself," a land where
none but women dwell, and they are
"very stark and cruel ;" and no man dare
bide more than an hour.
THE SEA OF SAND
Strange as these stories sound, they are
only slight perversions of the truth.
During a visit to the Lop Basin in
1905-6 the writer observed facts which
may perhaps explain all of them. For
instance, when first one sees Chinese
women of high class their diminutive
feet are strangely suggestive of the hoofs
of animals. As to the fable of the land
of Femenye, there is nothing now to give
rise to it directly. Marco Polo relates,
however, that in his day in the region of
Hami, not many hundred miles from
Lop-Nor, none but women were found in
the villages when caravans arrived. The
men departed in order that the travelers
might be more comfortable, and might
be the more ready to pay for entertain-
ment. Even today the people of Hami
possess customs which seem to be a
reminiscence of the ancient habit.
Other portions of the old accounts are
equally explicable. The Lop Basin, in
the very center of Asia, is a great depres-
sion, 1,400 miles long from east to west
and 400 wide. Around it lies a ring of
lofty plateaus from 10,000 to 20,000 feet
high. At their base is a ring of piedmont
gravel, almost destitute of life, and
sloping gently inward like a huge beach
from 5 to 40 miles wide. Then comes
another ring, the zone of vegetation,,
where alone there are plants and an op-
portunity for human inhabitants other
than the few nomads of the plateaus.
Finally within the zone of vegetation lies
a vast desert area about 1,000 miles long
and 250 wide. Its western three-quar-
ters consist of a veritable Sea of Sand,
the Takla-makan desert, yellow or gray
on the edges, pink in the inner portions.
Row after row of almost impassable sand
dunes has been piled up by the wind to
heights of full 500 feet in places. The
smallest dunes often move forward
hundreds of feet in a year in the direction
of the prevailing winds ; the largest
scarcely move at all. The sand is most
beautiful, with its graceful sweep of wavy
dunes and ripples, but the natives hate
and fear it. It has proved the grave of
many a native gone mad with thirst in
the vain search for the gold supposed to
lie hidden in sand-buried ruins.
A few rivers flow into the desert of
Takla-makan. Most of them soon wither
to nothing. All are very variable, and
some, such as the Vash Sheri, flow in
raging, impassable torrents during sunny
weather in summer, but dry up when
cloudy days among the mountains pre-
vent the melting of snow. The dry
beds of these "Sabbatic" streams form
veritable "rivers of stones." In certain
cases one might almost say with the old
chronicler that there are streams "whose
sands are mere precious stones." When
the Khotan and Keriya rivers are low,
crowds of natives go out from the oases
to dig in the gravel of the river-bed for
jade, one of the most highly prized of
Chinese precious stones. Gold also is
found in the upper parts of the beds of
the Keriya and other rivers.
THE SEA OF SALT
East of the Sea of Sand there lies a
Sea of Salt, the bed of the ancient Lake of
MEDIEVAL TALES OF THE LOP BASIN 29
Photos by Ellsworth Huntington
A LOPLIK HOUSE OF REEDS
LOPLIK WOMEN AND CHILDREN
292
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Lop-Nor. Today the lake is merely a
marsh, fed by the Tarim River, and filled
with huge reeds 12 or 15 feet high. Near
the mouth of the river, where alone the
water is fresh enough to
§ support life, the Lopliks
f have planted their vil-
lages of reeds. For-
ts merly, according to their
•5 own account, they lived
§ wholly on fish and birds
= caught in the open lanes
~ and pools of the swamp,
where the fishermen still
I paddle their canoes of
- hollowed poplar. They
cannot go far to the
i>ast, for there the
swamp grows more and
more saline, until finally
plain of salt, the bed of
the expanded lake of
former times.
The old bed of Lop-
Nor is one of the most
absolute deserts in the
world. In January, 1906,
the writer explored this
hitherto unknown waste,
where even the hardy
natives never venture.
For five days the cara-
van stumbled wearily
over a sea of rock-salt
broken into huge poly-
gons 10 or 12 feet in
diameter, which had
buckled up around the
edges to a height of
from one to three feet.
It was like the choppiest
sort of sea frozen solid.
When we selected what
appeared to be soft
places in which to pitch
the tents, the iron tent
pegs bent double. When
we wanted to spread our
beds to sleep, it was
necessary to hew away
junks of salt with an
axe. For 60 miles north
and south and for nearlv
MEDIEVAL TALES OF THE LOP BASIN
293
Photos by Ellsworth Huntington
CHAXTOS OF THE OASIS OF KHOTAN GATHERED FOR THE WEEKLY SUMMER FETE rX
HONOR OF THE LIFE-GIVING RIVER
The woman in the foreground (right) suffers from goitre, a common malady, said to be due
to malicious genii who grip people by the throat while they are sleeping
294 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photos by Ellsworth Huntington
THE OASIS OF KHOTAN
Entrance to the Shrine of Imam Jafir Sadik in the southern part of the Takla-makan
Desert. A hundred yards from this gate one enters sand like that of the upper photograph on
page 288. The Shrine is near the end of the Niya River.
THE KEY TO THE PACIFIC
295
200 east and west there is absolutely not
a sign of any living thing.
It is relatively but a little while since
Lop-Nor was much larger than now and
expanded to such a size that most, if not
all, of the old bed was covered by water,
as is proved by the location of ancient
roads and beaches. At the time of Christ,
as the writer has shown in "The Pulse
of Asia," the lake appears to have been
of large dimensions. Then it diminished
in size, and about five centuries later was
probably as small or smaller than it now
is. Later it expanded, and with varying
fluctuations remained comparatively large
until about 1600 A. D. Now it has once
more diminished, and the people who
formerly were supported by it have
largely died off. A century or two ago
they used to carry fish two or three hun-
dred miles eastward to the Chinese cities
where Nestorian Christians lived in the
days of Marco Polo and earlier. Now
the desert has become so rigorous
and the fish have so decreased in number
that the traffic has been given up. The
writer of the Letters of Prester John
was almost right when he said that fish
were procured from the Sea of Sand.
They certainly came from the border be-
tween it and the Sea of Salt.
Further details might be added show-
ing that the statements in the Letters
could only have been written by a man
who had some knowledge of Central
Asia, although his information may have
been much distorted. Enough has been
said to show that in Chaucer's day and
earlier the Lop Basin was by no means
an entirely unknown land. It is a con-
tinual surprise to mankind to find how
wide a knowledge was possessed by
earlier generations.
* For further information on this part of the
world, the reader is referred to "The Pulse of
Asia:" a journey in Central Asia, illustrating
the geographic basis of history. By Ellsworth
Huntington. Pp. 415. Illustrated. New York:
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1907. $3.50.
THE KEY TO THE PACIFIC
BY HON. GEORGE C. PERKINS
UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM CALIFORNIA
THE importance of the Hawaiian
Islands to the Pacific Coast
states is supreme. Those states
in the future will rely more and more
for their prosperity upon the trade with
the Orient across the Pacific, and with
the East and Europe through the Panama
Canal. That there may be a guarantee
that this commerce shall endure and in-
crease in volume, the United States must
be at least the equal in naval power of
any nation using those waters for the
transportation of goods; and a part of
the power of a navy is supplied by its
"bases, from which all exposed points can
be best watched and whence aid can be
most quickly sent.
As such a base the Hawaiian Islands
present advantages to us which have no
counterparts elsewhere in the Pacific.
Lying within easy steaming distance of
our Pacific coast, as naval vessels are to-
day constructed, they afford a point from
which the whole North Pacific Ocean can
be patrolled by cruisers, and from which
the commerce of the Panama Canal can
be protected. They afford a strategic
point whose vast significance can be re-
alized best by supposing the islands in the
hands of a hostile power engaged in war
with us. From that point the enemy
could send out cruisers to sweep from the
sea the commerce of the Pacific ports
and of the canal, while it would afford a
base of operations for attacks on our
Pacific Coast ports, as well as on the
Canal Zone.
With these islands in the hands of an
296 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
SSROADS OF
enemy, it is doubtful whether we could
control the canal for a day, while the en-
tire coast line of the Pacific states and the
bays and harbors of our rapidly growing
Alaska would be in constant expecta-
tion of a hostile descent. For the de-
fense of our Pacific coast and its com-
merce, therefore, the Hawaiian Islands
are vital, and this fact is recognized, I
think, by every one who has given the
matter careful attention.
In addition to the strategic relation to
the Pacific coast of the United States,
which Hawaii possesses, it has a similar
relation to our island possessions further
west — Guam and the Philippines. Hawaii
and Guam are the ocean stations of the
American cable between the United
States and our possessions on the
coast of Asia, and as such are of vast
importance in any scheme of defense of
the Philippines or of the Pacific states.
This line is of the greatest use to our
commerce, and its safety can be. assured
only through means of defending its
island stations against hostile attack.
THE KEY TO THE PACIFIC
297
And that commerce, which will continue
to grow as the years pass, is not alone
with progressive Japan and teeming
China, but with our own fertile islands on
the Asiatic coast and with the great
English-speaking colonies of Great
Britain in New Zealand and Australia.
In 1893 our greatest authority on the sea
power and naval strategy, Captain A. T.
Mahan, wrote with reference to the pro-
posed annexation of Hawaii :
"To any one viewing a map that shows
the full extent of the Pacific .
two circumstances will be strikingly and
immediately apparent. He will see at a
glance that the Sandwich Islands stand
by themselves in a state of comparative
isolation, amid a vast expanse of sea ;
and, again, that they form the center of a
large circle whose radius is approxi-
mately the distance from Honolulu to
San Francisco . . . this is substan-
tially the same distance as from Honolulu
to the Gilbert, Marshall, Samoan, and So-
ciety Islands, all under European control
except Samoa, in which we have a part
influence.
"To have a central position such as
this, and to be alone, having no rival
are conditions that at once fix
the attention of the strategist .
But to this striking combination is to be
added the remarkable relations borne
to the great commercial routes
traversing this vast expanse.
"Too much stress cannot be laid upon
the immense disadvantages to us of any
maritime enemy having a coaling station
well within 2,500 miles, as this is, of
every point of our coast line from Puget
Sound to Mexico. Were there many
others available we might find it difficult
to exclude them all. There is, however,
but the one. Shut out from the Sand-
wich Islands as a coal base, an enemy is
thrown back for supplies of fuel to dis-
tances of 3,500 or 4,000 miles — or be-
tween 7,000 and 8,000 going and com-
ing— an impediment to sustained mari-
time operations well nigh prohibitive
. . . It is rarely that so important a
factor in the attack or defense of a coast
line — of a sea frontier — is concentrated
in a single position, and the circumstance
renders doubly imperative upon us to
secure it if we righteously can."
Hawaii is on the track of probably all
the trade which the Pacific Coast states
have with the rest of the world, and
therefore, as a strategic point, it is of
supreme importance that it be joined to
us "by hooks of steel" which it would
take the navies of the world to break.
The relation of a strategic point like
Hawaii to the safety of the nation is illus-
trated by the relation of Gibraltar and
Malta to the safety of Great Britain. The
control of the Mediterranean is essential
to England, as thereby she dominates the
coasts of all the adjacent countries and
controls hostile movements. "If," writes
Lord Brassey, "we are resolved to re-
tain our hold on the Mediterranean, it is
imperatively necessary that our two naval
bases at Malta and Gibraltar should be
made secure from attack and efficient for
the repair and protection of the fleet. In
Malta and Gibraltar we hold strategical
positions of the utmost importance."
They are of utmost importance because
they control the trade route through the
Suez Canal, dominate the coasts of
what may at some time be hostile na-
tions, and render unnecessary the con-
stant presence in the Mediterranean of a
fleet of overwhelming strength. That
strength may be safely confided to the
channel and home fleets, which, with
bases in that sea, can at any time secure
control of it.
"If we abandon the Mediterranean."
says Lord Brassey, "we cease to be a
first-class power in Europe. . . .
Upon a consideration of all the circum-
stances, it is clear that the dignity, the
wealth, and the influence of England for
peace depend on the retention of a para-
mount position as a naval power in the
Mediterranean. We have that position
now, and the recent manifestations of
popular sentiment have shown that we
are resolved to keep it." In that last
sentence substitute for the words "Eng-
land" and "Mediterranean" the words
"United States" and "Pacific" and see if
it will not apply with peculiar aptness to
298
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
our own position on the greatest of the
world's oceans. I think it expresses the
present situation with exactness, and is
an unanswerable argument in behalf of
securing to the United States the Ha-
waiian Islands as Great Britain has se-
cured to herself Gibraltar and Malta.
These islands would not long remain
ours, in case of war with a sea power, if
they remain in the condition in which
they now are. Gibraltar and Malta are
the strongest fortresses in Europe. So
should Hawaii be the strongest fortress
in the Pacific. The President recognizes
this, and in his latest annual address rec-
ommends an appropriation for the forti-
fication of Pearl Harbor. The War De-
partment also recognizes it, and recom-
mends the appropriation of $1,100,000
with which to continue the necessary
work. That this work should go on with-
out intermission until we have established
there an impregnable naval base goes
without saying. The only thing needed
is money, and I am sure that Congress
sees the necessity of voting liberal appro-
priations.
Pearl Harbor is susceptible of being
made another Gibraltar, where the larg-
est fleet may safely lie and where re-
pairs may be made at leisure. It con-
sists of an elliptical lagoon 8 miles long
by 4 wide, with a depth of water rang-
ing from 30 to 130 feet. It is completely
land-locked, preventing surprise attack
from submarines or torpedo boats, as
well as from hostile fleets. In the rear
are mountain ranges 3,000 or 4,000 feet
high, on the slopes of which are the mili-
tary reservation, about 10 miles from the
harbor, where a salubrious climate is se-
cured. Reservations for fortifications,
wharves, and all that is necessary for a
first-class naval station have been secured,
and this channel has been dredged to 30
feet, and may easily be deepened much
more and straightened to insure easier
navigation for battleships, which work
can be done, it is thought, at an expense
not exceeding $750,000, the value of the
customs receipts of Honolulu for six
months.
General Schofield, in 1872, reported on
Pearl Harbor that "it could be completely
defended by inexpensive batteries on
either or both shores, firing across a nar-
row channel of entrance. Its waters are
deep enough for the largest vessel of war,
and its lochs, particularly around Rabbit
Island, are spacious enough for a large
number of vessels to ride at anchor in
perfect security against all storms. Its
shores are suitable for building proper
establishments for sheltering the neces-
sary supplies for a naval establishment,
such as magazines of ammunition, pro-
visions, coal, spars, rigging, etc., while
the Island of Oahu, upon which it is situ-
ated, could furnish . fresh provisions,
meats, fruits, and vegetables in large
quantities."
Too much stress cannot be given to
the fact that if Pearl Harbor is to be for-
tified successfully the work must be done
in time of peace. When war comes it
would be too late, and woe to us if we
are not prepared for defense as well as
for attack. It behooves Congress, there-
fore, to give special attention now to the
necessities of Pearl Harbor, and to liber-
ally provide the means by which it may
stand forever the strongest bulwark
which we possess in the western ocean.
HAWAII FOR HOMES
BY H. P. WOOD
MUCH has been written about the
charming climate of Hawaii,
the beautiful scenery, and the
smooth seas to the coral-fringed Para-
dise; and now that a struggle for the
mastery of the Pacific, that ocean of such
great potentialities, is on among the na-
tions of the earth, it is seen that Hawaii,
HAWAII FOR HOMES
299
from its strategic position, must soon be-
come a great military stronghold, prob-
ably the greatest in the world. Certain
it is that Pearl Harbor, on the Island of
Oahu, near the city of Honolulu, will be
rapidly developed as America's mid-
Pacific naval base, the entire island of
Oahu being practically converted into a
vast military encampment. The protec-
tion of the Pacific coast and our prestige
as a nation demand that this be done.
Hawaii's future prosperity, however,
is not dependent upon its unequaled
climate, beautiful scenery, or strategic
position, but will be due to the fact that
here is found, as possibly nowhere else
on the face of the globe, all that goes to
make perfect home conditions — a place
where a man with a few acres of land
can earn a good living for himself and
family and provide for a comfortable old
age, surrounded by all that tends to make
life enjoyable.
Of Hawaii it has been well said: "A
•section able to produce such a variety of
tropical articles as may be produced in
the Hawaiian Islands, and having free
"hospitality of its citizens by those who
have been privileged to voyage over
.access to a market demanding such enor-
mous quantities of those various articles
as does the market of the United States,
ought to become not merely prosperous,
as it already is, but one of the most pros-
perous and perhaps the most prosperous
of all the tropical communities of the
world. With the power to produce
sugar, of which the United States im-
ports more than one hundred million dol-
lars' worth a year; with the power to
produce coffee, of which we import from
seventy-five to one hundred million dol-
lars' worth annually; with the power to
grow rubber, of which we import fifty
million dollars' worth annually ; with the
power to produce tropical fruits, of which
we import thirty-five million dollars'
worth annually; with the power to pro-
duce sisal, of which we import fifteen
million dollars' worth annually, and with
the power to produce cocoa, of which we
import nearly ten million dollars' worth
annually, the possibilities of increased
prosperity in Hawaii seem very great/'
Today the advantages offered by Ha-
waii are enjoyed by comparatively few
people — about 200,000, including the
alien labor on the different plantations,
or say 32 persons to the square mile for
the entire area of 6,400 square miles.
Switzerland, a bleak, inhospitable coun-
try as compared with Hawaii, sustains in
comfort a population of 3,356,000. The
same number to the square mile would
give the territory of Hawaii a population
of 1,344,000, a number equal to that sup-
ported by the broad plains and fertile
acres of the State of Arkansas ; or if pop-
ulated as Italy, Hawaii would have
1,870,000 people within its boundaries,
while Belgium's rate of population to the
square mile would give Hawaii 3,760,000,
or 19 times the present population.
Hawaii offers room and opportunities
for many hundred thousands of home-
seekers. The agricultural colleges
throughout the country could perform
splendid work in tropical agriculture,
entering into correspondence with the
dean of the College of Agriculture, Hon-
olulu, Hawaii, and thus secure reliable
data as to the wonderful growth of the
pineapple industry and the possibilities in
rubber, tobacco, tropical fruits, etc. By
doing this they would confer a lasting
benefit upon thousands of young men
throughout the country who are now
looking around for openings and who will
find in Hawaii just the opportunities they
are seeking.
The territorial authorities are most de-
sirous of settling the islands with a
citizen class of small landed proprietors,
and will gladly welcome all home-build-
ers who are strong and industrious, able
and willing to work. It is the hope of
those having the best interests of Hawaii
at heart to make of the islands an ideal
American communitv.
WHY NIK-KO IS BEAUTIFUL
BY J. H. DE FOREST, SENDAI, JAPAN
JAPAN is confessedly the most beau-
tiful country in the world. Every-
where you go you have in sight
the two essentials of bewitching
scenery, mountains of every size and
shape indented by picturesque canyons
and lovely valleys, all based on water in
bays and inlets and ocean. It is a land
of perpetual beauty, conspicuously cen-
tral to which is the peerless Fuji, the only
mountain on the globe that rises 12,365
feet in one impressive unbroken curve
from the ocean.
But hidden among all this scenic
grandeur the one great park of wooded
mountains around a crater lake that with
foreigners and natives alike takes the
prize is the Nik-ko region. Kek-ko is
the Japanese word for superlatively
splendid, so that all through Japan these
two words are inseparably mated — Nik-ko
and Kek-ko. Don't say Kek-ko until
you've seen Nik-ko. You have no suf-
ficient knowledge of the splendid until
you have visited this park of splendor. If
you try to analyze Nik-ko's splendor, one
captivating feature is the avenue of
mighty cryptomerias that for a dozen
miles forms a lofty Gothic archway lead-
ing up to the village 2,000 feet above the
ocean. Another important element is the
waterfalls and cascades that burst from
the sides of the wooded mountains or
tumble in amazing confusion over pre-
cipitous rocks into the dark, narrow val-
leys. Yet one more element is the ex-
ceptionally large crater lake, Chuzenji,
4,385 feet up in the clouds, surrounded
by the old crater walls, portions of which
are now gently sloping and covered with
dense forests, while on another section
rises the dead peak of the last volcano
that helps to make Nik-ko and its vicin-
ity so wonderfully beautiful — Nantai-
zan.
But nature's work has been richly sup-
plemented by man's hand in beautifying
this paradise. There is the red bridge of
one span (80 feet), which is reserved ex-
clusively for His Majesty the Emperor.
When General Grant visited Nik-ko as
the guest of the nation, this sacred bridge
was opened for him, but he modestly de-
clined to cross the Imperial bridge,
thereby winning the deep reverence and
affection of the people. Even the present
Crown Prince a few years ago refused to
cross the bridge, preferring to identify
himself with the people by taking the
common bridge just below.
Beyond the bridge, amid tall crypto-
merias, is a historic Buddhist temple,
whose sweeping double roof is in perfect
harmony with its surroundings. You
cannot but gaze at it whenever it appears
in sight. A little farther on is the mau-
soleum of leyasu, the greatest statesman
of feudal Japan, under whose orders the
political Christianity of the Catholics was
stamped out in fearful slaughters of be-
lievers and the country closed against
foreign intercourse. High above the
mausoleums of leyasu and his grandson
lemitsu, on a rocky formation, is leyasu's
massive bronze tomb.
But apart from what man has done,
what makes this region so enchantingly
beautiful ? What is the secret of this
beauty ? This was the question that con-
tinuously challenged me as I spent a few
weeks in this environment. In general
it may be said that Japan's beauty is of a
different type from much of our Euro-
pean and American beauty. New Eng-
land, for example, with its shores, its
mountains, its innumerable lakes, all near
sea-level, is indeed beautiful, but its
rounded hills, its moraines, and lakelets
are all the work of immense glaciers.
Japan, however, is wholly the child of
volcanoes and earthquakes. Hence the
long curving slopes of many of the
mountains ; the abrupt and frightful con-
tortions of portions of the mountain
scenery ; the marvelously entrancing
crater lakes far up in the skies. Any one
WHY NIK-KO is BEAUTIFUL
301
THE MONSEKI OF RINNO TEMPLE, ABBOT HIKOSAKA
used to our glacial beauty is at first sight
surprised and captivated by Japan's vol-
canic beauty.
Now Nik-ko seems to have gathered
into its own region all the beauty pos-
sible under volcanic conditions. The
long egg-shaped Lake Chuzenji was once
the crater of a horrible volcano. It blew
high in air from its huge mouth the froth
of its lavas and buried deep the whole
region around with its so-called ashes.
Then its lavas rising in the crater broke
through the weak tufa walls and flowed
in red-hot streams over the coarse ashes
in every possible direction, baking them
into tough, porous rocks. Later on
another prolonged blast of coarse ashes
and rocks would bury the lavas scores of
feet deep, only to be again overflowed by
boiling streams of lava, until the whole
302 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
-THE WIND GOD IN IEMITSU S MAUSOLEUM
region became alternate strata of lava
and tufa, broken here and there by earth-
quakes of tremendous power. And out
of this frightful desolation and disorder
has come the exceptional beauty of
Nik-ko ! Every waterfall there tumbles
off from a lava bed, and wherever pos-
sible cuts down through the underlying
tufa and flows along on the next lower
lava shelf.
It adds tenfold to the enjoyment of
seeing the finest waterfall in Japan,
Kegon, if you only notice how it was
made. It is one huge spout of water
about 20 feet in diameter jumping about
250 feet into the pool below. From top
to bottom it is white with foam, and, as
it falls, from its edges shoot off comet-like
bunches of water with spreading tails of
thinner foam, until the whole has passed
the lava cliff a hundred feet thick. When
to the beauty of this magnificent column
of water-foam is added the beauty of a
fringe of baby waterfalls bursting from
the underlying tufa, and half encircling
the giant spout, they all together take the
final plunge of a hundred feet more : and
when the gorgeous foliage of the ravine
bends across the gorge, so that against
this spotless white foam you can see the
shapes of the branches and leaves, you
have a picture the memory of which
abides forever with every lover of nature.
In descending the ravine to the place
where Kegon looks its best, we pass close
to one of the tufa strata, from the holes
of which shoot out water enough to make
a powerful, roaring stream, and this cas-
cade in turn makes another famed water-
fall called Haku-un, the White Cloud.
The photograph plainly shows the thick
lava above and the innumerable streams
breaking out where the lava meets the
tufa.
Coming down from Chuzenji to
Nik-ko any one can see lavas and tufas
alternating where the mountain sides
have been denuded by storms or broken
by earthquakes. I saw seven such strata
in one place, and it was that sight which
gave me the key to the beautv of Nik-ko.
At one of the tea-houses on the road are
seen two charming falls in the distant
ravines tumbling off thin lava beds. They
have cut through one tufa bed and are
flowing along on the lava bed, from which
they tumble down to another. The
stream that flows through Nik-ko is con-
WHY NIK-KO is BEAUTIFUL
303
NEAR IKYASU S MAUSOLEUM
On the way to Chuzenji is a graveyard so overshadowed with cryptomerias that it is hard
to get good photos. This avenue is formed by the lofty monolithic gravestones of the illus-
trious Samurai, who had the Shogun's permission to commit hara kiri in order to accompany
their beloved leyasu on his journey of death.
fined in narrow and winding lava chan-
nels just above the town, where the
swollen waters boil with frightful noise.
It is one of the sights of Nik-ko to watch
the violent threshing of the water there
upon the twisted sides and cavities of the
unyielding lava. Just below this hell-
gate, called Gamman-ga-fuchi, is the Im-
perial bridge, one of the charms of which
to me is that its massive stone posts rest
on the last appearance of the lava beds
that flowed down from an unknown vol-
cano of the distant past. Far up the hill
to the left the tomb of leyasu stands on
the highest part of this same ancient lava
stratum.
The artificial beauty of Nik-ko centers
around the Rinno temple and the mauso-
leums of leyasu and lemitsu. To meet
the two men who hold the highest places
in the sacred enclosures, and talk with
them about the intensely interesting his-
tory of this region, is a real education.
Being favored through our (then) lega-
tion with letters of introduction from the
Home Minister, I was shown the national
treasures of the Buddhist temple and of
the leyasu mausoleum. This is no place
to go into details, but I was so cordially
met by these gentlemen that I wish to add
to this partial description of Nik-ko the
faces of these distinguished officials from
photographs they kindly gave me. The
position of high priest, or abbot, in
Rinno-ji is an Imperial appointment. The
young princes and princesses who spend
304 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
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The peak of Shirane appears in the distance, where a crater lake is being made. The
exterior of the bath-house whose interior is shown in the next photos. Hundreds of people
afflicted with syphilis and leprosy gather at this famous hot spring.
the summer at Nik-ko used to go every
morning to the court of the temple and
'"worship" the souls of the officers who
died in the Russian war. The alcove be-
fore which they knelt was rilled with the
photographs of these brave and loyal
men. The distinguished title of the
Abbot Hiko-saka is Monseki, which con-
veys the meaning of Imperial appoint-
ment. It was in this temple court that
General and Mrs. Grant were entertained,
and as in those early days (about 1878)
there was no foreign hotel in Nik-ko, and
therefore no such thing as a bedstead, the
priest had a bedstead made worthy of a
military hero. There is no scrimping of
timber in its frame, and, since springs
were wholly unknown, they wove the
"bedstead with bands of plate iron ! A
mate to this bedstead was made on the
same heroic plan for Her Excellency
Mrs. Grant. When this famous couple
went to bed, of course they found over
the iron network a pile of soft silk futons
a. foot thick.
. The official chief of the Shogun shrines
is Baron Naka-yama, one of the highest
in rank among Shintoists. It is well to
remember that Shintoism is not now
called a religion by the Japanese ; it is a
cult. No government has ever handled the
perplexing question of church and state
so admirably as has that of Japan. See-
ing that Shintoism with the "worship" of
the Imperial ancestors and national heroes
would surely lead to a clash with Chri>-
tianity, Shintoism was officially changed
from the grade of a religion to that of
a cult which concerns Japan alone. This
step leaves it possible for a Christian to
"worship" at the shrines just as we
worship when we take off our hats at the
tomb of Washington. In the course of
a delightful conversation I asked the
Baron, "Is there any objection to a Shin-
toist becoming a Christian?" He replied
with a smile, "None whatever."
Nik-ko is a great national center of
religion and reverence in an environment
of marvelous beautv.
306
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
VOL. XIX, No. 5
WASHINGTON
MAY, 1908
THE
'AT:
WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
Visit to Picturesque Dalmatia, Montenegro and Bosnia
BY MARIAN CRUGER COFFIN
With photographs by the author
THE Dalmatian coast deserves its
reputation for picturesque beauty.
The great limestone mountains —
practically bare of vegetation and culmi-
nating in peaks over 5,000 feet high, de-
scend to the sea in an almost unbroken
line, while a continual fringe of islands
forms a buffer between the coast and the
Adriatic from Fiume to where the Bocche
di Cattaro lies like a giant starfish spread
out upon the land, cutting deep into the
mountains with its great tentacles.
The fertile rivieras lie in nooks of the
coast, sheltered from the fierce "Bora,"
"the wind of death," which in winter
sweeps down from the mountain gorges
with terrific force ; these are practically
the only cultivated lands in this desert
country. The contrast between the
island-studded sea, the rugged mountains,
and the semi-tropical vegetation com-
bined with old-world architecture of the
cities affords a picture not easily for-
gotten.
The interior is wild, lonely, and im-
pressive, and so barren and uninviting
that except for the Falls of the Kerka it
is seldom visited by the traveler. Beau-
tiful in the extreme, the falls, or rather
cascades, gain an added interest from
their source being one of those under-
ground rivers not uncommon in this part
of Europe. The Kerka rises to the sur-
face of the ground in the form of a blue-
green lake, surrounded by verdure, the
life and color appearing like a miracle in
the midst of the desolate hills.
The towns of the coast are distinctive
and have each their special points of in-
terest as well as architectural beauty.
Zara and Sebenico have fine Duomos,
Spalato and Salona are famous for their
Roman remains, and indeed much of
Spalato is built within the walls of Dio-
cletian's palace, while at Trau and Ra-
gusa are admirable examples of medieval
architecture, dating from the occupation
or influence of Venice.
RAGUSA
Ragusa is easily queen of the Dalma-
tian cities. None can compare with her in
beauty of site or architectural and his-
torical interest. She has stood for cen-
turies a sister republic to Venice, a bul-
wark in Europe against the Turk, a wise
310 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
3'1
t:
C<
312
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
•and prosperous state. The great walls
still inclose the town and are practically
intact. They form a striking contrast to
the architectural delicacy of the public
buildings and palaces which rise on the
steeply terraced streets, for the town is
built on a narrow peninsula between the
mountains and the sea. On Sundays,
when the peasants from Canalle come in
for church and the smart Austrian officers
promenade about, the gay little city pre-
sents an almost opera bouffe aspect, with
the medieval setting and the brilliant
crowds flashing with color and military
pomp.
The environs are most lovely, the
wealth of figs, aloes, cypresses, and every
sort of semi-tropical and rock-blooming
plant making the surrounding country a
veritable garden in spring and early
summer. Lacroma and the other neigh-
boring islands seem fairy isles, too ex-
quisite for human habitation, but about
the former hang sad memories of Prince
Rudolph and Emperor Maximillian
and legendary ones of Richard Coeur
de Lion, for the old monastery was
once a favorite resort of royalty, but has
since been restored to its former uses.
The morlaks or peasants are a sturdy,
independent race, mostly of Slav extrac-
tion, and distinctly well to do, especially
about Spalato and Ragusa, where the soil
is fertile and the crops large.
QUAINT COSTUMES IN DALMATIA
The tiny Dalmatian cap of scarlet cloth,
fialf embroidered in black with a black
tassel, is worn by the men the entire
length of the coast, while no inhabitant
•of the Peninsula is seen without the use-
ful bag slung over one shoulder, of woven
carpet material, embroidered linen, or
leather studded with nails. It serves all
purposes — a cradle for the baby, a ward-
robe for the family clothes, a larder for
the provisions, as well as a convenient re-
ceptacle for little pigs going to market!
Except for these common features the
costumes vary in every district. At Zara
may be seen the striking sleeveless scarlet
vest ornamented with silver buttons, while
about Sebenico the men affect a curious
waistcoat and jacket of brown homespun,
piped and trimmed with woolen fringe of
bright magenta color.
In the country the women wear a heavy
apron of carpet material heavily fringed
and are seldom seen without a distaff in
their hands as they ride or walk to
market. Those from Canalle are noted
for their charming costumes of embroid-
ered linen, and they with their men folk
were the only people we saw in the Balk-
ans with adequate head covering, the
wide, stiff fluted handkerchiefs of the
women and the straw hats of the men
protecting them from the sun. In sum-
mer the heat and glare in these shadeless
lands is intense, but a handkerchief or a
stiff brimless cap seems the fashion,
while for dress occasions both sexes will
pile one homespun garment over another,
for in the Near East the more you wear
the finer you are !
AN UNCONQUERED RACE
But if the people and the scenery of
Dalmatia are interesting-, those of Monte-
negro are infinitely more so. A land of
mountains, apparently without valleys,
and almost destitute of vegetation, Mon-
tenegro seems to have emerged out of a
chaos of the gods to be primeval rib
of the world. And, in keeping with the
country, is the proud and independent
character of this race, who have retreated
step by step before the Turk from the fat
lands they once held, preferring freedom
in their rocky fastnesses to soft living
under the yoke of Islam. And it must be
remembered to their everlasting credit
that they not only remained free when the
other Slav peoples as well as the Greek,
Albanian, and Bulgar fell before the
power of the Turk, but that they main-
tained their independence when all
Europe, to the gates of Vienna, trembled
before the hosts of the Crescent.
Disembarking at Cattaro (lying baking
in the August sun) after a wonderful
sail through the tortuous Bocche di
Cattaro or "mouths of Cattaro," we took
the waiting carriage and started on the
WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
Jayce (
B O S N , A ^ SERV1A
\ ^ »Sarajevo\
SKETCH MAP OF EAST COAST OF ADRIATIC SEA
climb up the mountain wall to Montene-
gro or the "Black Mountain." Cattaro
is the natural port for Montenegro, but is
jealously guarded by Austria, and it was
not until we had ascended for more than
an hour that we came to the striped black
and yellow post that marks the boundary.
Our driver stopped to water the horses,
to collect his revolver (left at a wayside
hut, as it is forbidden to carry weapons
over the border), and pointed to his
native crags above, saying proudly,
"Crnagora." We turned for a last look
at the superb view spread out below us,
the sea shimmering in the distance, and
at our feet the land-locked Bocche
guarded by the mighty Orjen and the
peaks of Herzegovina to the north and
west.
We reached Njegus by the waning
light. This our first Montenegrin town
was the birthplace of the prince, and is a
village with one wide street and small,
low stone houses. Wherever there is
sufficient space little patches of vegetables
are cultivated in a series of stone terraces,
built to keep the precious soil from being
swept away by the heavy rains. These
little garden plats give a curiously
checker-board aspect to the valleys and
hillsides in contrast to the wastes of rocks
above.
From Njegus we climbed steadily up
through the same dreary crags, even more
solitary and impressive in the moonlight,
and reached the top of the pass (3,500
feet), from which Cettinje can be seen
in the daylight. Scarce a trace of habi-
314 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
PEASANT CARDING, DALMATIA
WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
3'5
WOMEN NE)AR SPALATO, DAL M ATI A
Note the heavy brocaded apron (see page 312)
316 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
TWO BEAUX IN "THE: BOCCHE"
WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
3'7
AT ZARA, DALMATIA
3 i 8 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
'
WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
3'9
tation was to be seen. We stopped to
water the horses at a wayside hut, wild
young girls shyly waited on us, then
passed a solitary dwelling and heard the
minor wail of the one-stringed gusle
(the national musical instrument) and a
strong bass voice singing one of the old
ballads, probably about the Tzar Lazar
and the field of Kosovo, or possibly of
the doings of the singer's own immediate
forefathers in a border fray against the
hated Albanians.
CAPITAL OF MONTENEGRO
The Europe we know is left far behind.
We drop suddenly from the complexities
of modern life into the peace and sim-
plicity of the patriarchal system, still in
force in this strange little state where
east and west meet so subtly. Here a
man's life is of small account, but he will
hold his honor above all earthly price,
while the ambition of every boy is to be a
warrior and rival the deeds of the heroes
of old.
Twenty years ago Cettinje was a col-
lection of hovels. Now it is a clean, neat
little town with wide streets and low
stone houses roofed with red tile. There
are no attempts at architectural decora-
tion — all is plain and bare and seems to
have sprung from the very soil of the
mountain-locked plain. It has been called
a kindergarten capital, and though but a
village in size, conducts itself with the
importance befitting the center of the
country. It boasts a theater and the
Prince's very modest palace, while the
large, pretentious embassies of Austria
and Russia guard opposite ends of the
town like two great bloodhounds waiting
to pounce on their prey.
Sights, in the strict sense of the word,
there are none, but one may entertain
oneself by bargaining in the market with
the handsome girls for colored strips of
embroidery with which they trim their
blouses, chatting with some one who has
a word or two of German or Italian,
admiring the medals of the older men
gained in the last war with the Turks
(proudly shown off by the younger men,
the wearers modestly deprecating their
own glory), taking a friendly cup of cof-
fee with the tailor who is making one
a national costume, or waiting for a
glimpse of some member of the royal
family to pass by, possibly the Prince
himself.
But the amusement of all others that
never palled on us was watching this
handsome race airing their finery in the
open streets of Cettinje. The national
costume seems designed to show off the
grace and dignity inherent in even the
humblest Montenegrin — crimson and
gold sparkle in the sunshine, in dazzling
contrast to the somber tints of the en-
circling mountains, real gold, too, which
is elaborately worked in the garment by
hand. From the royal family down, the
men wear a long, wide-skirted coat of
light grey, white, robin's egg blue, or
dark green cloth, embroidered in gold, or
dark red, open wide in front over a crim-
son waistcoat heavily decorated in gold,
and confined about the waist by a broad
sash of plaid silk. The belt is stuck full
of weapons, knives, pistols, etc., for our
friend considers his toilette incomplete
without such accessories, and indeed one's
eyes become so accustomed to seeing
every man a walking arsenal that on re-
turning to work-a-day Europe people
look strangely undressed! Dark blue
breeches, baggy to the knee, with the
leg either incased in white homespun and
low string shoes on the feet, this is thor-
oughly characteristic, or if the wearer be
a bit of a dandy a pair of high black
riding boots will be worn instead ; a cane
for dress occasions and the cocky stiff-
brimmed cap complete the costume.
A tale hangs by the cap. The Montene-
grins are a conservative people and, like
all the Serbs of the P>alkans. look back
to the days of the great Servian Empire
when the Slavs held most of the Penin-
sula. The highest point of glory was
reached under Stephen Dushan, 1337-
1356, who planned to keep the Turk out
of Europe, but who unfortunately died
at the height of his career. In 1389 the
different Slav peoples made their last
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
united stand under Tzar Lazar Gubljan-
ovich on the plain of Kosovo. The day
was at first with Tsar Lazar, but, as usual
in the Peninsula, jealousies prevented
a concerted action and he was betrayed
by his son in law, Vuk Brankovich, who
coveted the crown. He deserted to the
enemy with 12,000 followers, a frightful
slaughter ensued, and the Balkans fell to
the invader. This fateful I5th of June is
a day of mourning throughout Serb lands
and the Montenegrin cap is worn in com-
memoration— the black is for mourning,
and the red-centered crown for the blood
shed on the field of Kosovo. A semicircle
of gilt braid encloses the Prince's initials
H. I., the circle typifying the rainbow
of hope that the Turk will be driven from
Europe and the great Servian Empire
again established.
A PROUD AND HANDSOME: RACE
The dress of the women is not so
gaudy as that of the men, though very
graceful. Like their brothers, they wear
the national cap without the gold braid,
the married women being distinguished
by a black lace veil falling behind. The
hair is parted and the mass of heavy
braids forms a coronet for the well-car-
ried heads. They wear a soft, silky
blouse with open sleeves and trimmed
with strips of delicate embroidery, a band
of which forms the low collar, then a red
or black velveteen bolero heavily braided
in gold, and over all a semi-fitting, open,
sleeveless coat reaching to the knees of
the same delicate shades as worn by the
men.
It would be hard to find a handsomer
race; the men, seldom under six feet,
strut about like war lords. Their only
business in life for generations has been
to protect their families from Turkish
raids when not engaged in actual warfare.
Consequently most of the hard work has
fallen to the women's share, which they
cheerfully perform, often carrying heavy
loads, such as great blocks of ice, from the
higher mountains down to the towns.
Such labor and the hard conditions of
life age them early, but when young the
girls are really beautiful, with noble,
Madonna-like faces ; the type is rather
mixed in coloring, neither light nor dark.
We saw many fine gray eyes and espe-
cially noticed a lovely shade of ruddy gold
hair.
Traveling in Montenegro is delight-
fully simple ; there are no trains and only
one carriage road in and out of Cettinje;
you either go by carriage or you take a
pack pony and scramble over the moun-
tain tracks. It is said that Prince Nickola
wishes to make Nikshitz his capital, as
being more in the center of the princi-
pality; the one road from Cettinje con-
nects with it via Podgoritza, but it is
doubtful if the scheme will be carried
through, as Cettinje is considered by the
representatives of the Powers to be the
"jumping-off place," and certainly Nik-
shitz would be much less accessible.
Delightful as were the days at Cettinje,
the beyond was ever calling, and it
seemed a pity when so near the Sultan's
domains not to drop over the border into
Albania, the most northwesterly vilayet
of the Empire, and see not only a bit of
this out-of-the-way province, but the Al-
banians, who are the wildest people left
in Europe, in their own country and in
their own capital. Our friends shook
their heads dubiously and advised us not
to go. "Why is there trouble?" "Where
there are Albanians there is always
trouble. The ladies had best stay with
us ; they can travel safely all over Mon-
tenegro, but the Albanians are a bad lot.''
However, we had seen enough of the
edge of the Eastern question to know that
every man's hand is turned against his
neighbor, and even now the Montenegrin
cannot get over the wars, cruelties, and
reprisals of his blood enemy of hundreds
of years.
We decided that the Albanian was
probably not so black as he was painted
and left Cettinje early one morning en
route for his capital of Scodra. After
leaving the town the road rose steadily,
and when we reached the top of the pass
we caught our breaths at the beauty of
the view spread out before us — peak after
WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
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< JS
1 -0
2 6
55 13
il
322 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
SAINT SAVINA, A GREEK ORTHODOX MONASTERY IN THE "BOCCHE
WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
323
I
A MONTENEGRIN DANDY
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A MONTENEGRIN OFFICIAL
WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
325
A MONTENEGRIN BRIDE
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WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
327
peak rose majestically above, far below
lay a green valley with its tiny village and
the long, lonely, opal lake of Scodra deep
set in its barren hills, while the grim
Albanian mountains showed blue and
hazy in the distance.
THE: LAKE OF SCODRA
We rattled down to Riejka, the village
on the lake, so named from Ivan Beg
Crnoievich (riejka means a stream), who
ruled in the latter half of the fifteenth
century and had his capital in this vicin-
ity. These were among the darkest years
for the Montenegrins, and Ivan was
forced to cede the rich plains of the Zeta
to the Turks and was driven to the moun-
tain fastnesses and there founded Cettinje
in 1484. He built a castle above Riejka
to fortify his new frontier and swore to
hold the Black Mountain at any price.
A wise as well as a warlike ruler, he
founded a monastery and sent for a print-
ing press from Venice, but twenty years
after the first book was printed in Lon-
don by Caxton ! Popular tradition says
that he but sleeps, and will one day awake
to lead his people in their hour of need.
But more pressing than past history
was the question of present transport, so
we hastened to make inquiries if the boat
was running on the lake. "No ; it was
broken." "What shall we do?" "If we
turn back or wait we shall miss the
Wednesday market in Scodra which we
have come so far to see." Then being
told that if enough passengers turned up
to make it worth while a small tug would
be run instead, we embarked in a row-
boat to reconnoiter. A small pink tug
presented itself, and also fortunately two
Italian gentlemen and a number of peas-
ants, so the list being complete we for-
eigners managed to stow ourselves in
front, the peasants aft, and the little boat
glided out on the pretty tortuous stream
through masses of lilies and water reeds,
gallantly trying to bar our progress into
this lovely solitary lake. Great herons
and spoonbills and other water fowl took
our passing through their favorite haunts
quite philosophically, too indifferent to
even flop away. We twisted and turned
for some time, and after passing a forti-
fied island emerged into the open lake —
Montenegro towered behind and the so-
called accursed mountains of Albania rose
in unreal cloudlike masses in the far dis-
tance.
Stops were made at Virbazar and Pla-
unitza to take passengers on and off ; at
the former place we persuaded the cap-
tain to take us ashore with him to pick
up the mail, for which he cheerfully an-
nounced he might have to wait at least
four hours ! So, with the captain and
mate, we scrambled into a dugout and
were rowed by a sheep-nosed, raucous-
voiced boy up another little creek to the
charmingly situated town, which was
quite overcome with astonishment at
seeing us, Europeans, especially women,
being rare.
We sat in front of the little drink shop
under the shade of fine old plain trees,
with our tea basket, an infinite delight
and amusement to the natives. Captain
and mate made no bones about s drinking
out of glasses encrusted with grime,
probably being used to Montenegrin cus-
toms, but the little maid who served us
evidently thought we were accustomed to
better things and politely gave the glasses
a wipe with still grimier fingers !
The town affords some attractive
views, while old fortifications on the hill
looked worth exploring, but the sun beat
down mercilessly and we succumbed to
the fascinations of shopping, assisted by
the entire population, with much advice
and many kindly pats on the back when
a certain article was tried on (in the
street, as the shop had become too con-
gested by onlookers) and considered be-
coming.
So far the transactions had been car-
ried on by means of signs, but now the
crowd made way for a handsome ragged
lad with an open face, evidently a trav-
eler, with a sturdy staff, and all his
worldly possessions tied up in a handker-
chief. He knew a few words of German
which he had learned from his father,,
who "had seen the world" (he had beeru
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
in the Austrian provinces) ; he, too, was
going abroad to seek his fortune, where
seemed immaterial. "He feared he might
find many bad people after leaving Mon-
tenegro, as he had been told that there
were many wicked people in other lands
who would not give food and shelter to
wayfarers." He proudly refused money
fand even cigarettes for his interpreting,
but wistfully asked "were the Herrschaf-
vten going his way, for in that case they
Could help him in their country as he had
helped them in his." The diligence came
in and he waived us a sad farewell as he
drove off. Poor boy ; we hoped the great
world would reward his brave trust.
The mail came at last, so we ree'm-
barked to continue our trip. The lake
opened, the same stone hills continued
to enclose it, without a sign of habitation
the entire length of forty-odd miles. The
sun set, casting glorious flame-colored
lights on mountain and water; the moon
rose, and we steamed past the Sultan's
one decrepit war ship flying the Crescent
of Islam and anchored off Scodra or
Scutari-Albanese, as it is called on our
maps, after a sixteen-hour trip. Great
canoes came out to the tug, our persons
and belongings were fought over, and, at
the risk of being dumped in the lake, we
were deposited on extremely topply
chairs and in the bottom of the canoe and
taken ashore. All was darkness, noise,
and confusion in the custom-house. We
smuggled the kodak and a couple of
books, and by giving a liberal backsheesh
got through at once and were conducted
by our friend the captain to the one inn
where it is possible to stay.
THE ALBANIANS
Scodra is situated at the end of the
lake, in the midst of a wide plain that late
in August was burned dust dry. The
town has a population of some 40,000 in-
habitants, and is considered by the Al-
banian the finest city in the world. It is
dirty, dingy, thoroughly Eastern, and
possesses a fascination all its own, for
here we are in a land and among a people
whose development was arrested in the
middle ages and who have not pro-
gressed in ideas, customs, or morals from
that time. Here there is no trace of the
West or modern civilization such as one
comes upon in striking contrast to Old
World ways in the other Balkan states.
The houses are concealed behind lo-foot
walls, with overhanging eaves of brown
tiles and picturesque blue or green lat-
ticed windows ; few houses but have a
garden, the vines and trees peeping grace-
fully over the walls. A few mosques
and minarets appear in the distance.
The Albanians are recognized to be
the descendants of the ancient inhabitants
of the Peninsula, who were here before
the Greeks or Romans, and are not allied
to the other Balkan peoples ; civilization
and empires have swept over them, and
they have gone on in their own savage way,
accepting a nominal ruler, but a nominal
only. They speak a language that is not
written. Their code of life and morals is
thoroughly medieval, and their proud
boast is that they have never betrayed a
friend or spared an enemy. Fighting is
the breath of their nostrils, and for this
reason they have been extremely useful
to the Sultan, and by fighting in his
armies have purchased immunity from
interference and taxation at home. If
you ask about the openly smuggled to-
bacco in Scodra Bazar you will be told,
"We Albanians do not chose to pay
taxes ; why should we ?"
Not only a brave but an able man, the
Albanian is quick to learn when given the
opportunity, and is keen and successful
in business when able to escape the blight
of the Turk, which is keeping him an
untutored savage.
The Bazar is the greatest attraction in
Scodra. It lies down by the river, a
labyrinth of narrow, ill-paved lanes with
gutters down the middle, where the pack
animals walk, the spaces between the tiny
booths being often not more than 6 feet
wide. Fascinating at all times, the scene
on market days is indescribable — a mass
of glaring barbaric color, the alleys
throbbing with a life that our ancestors,
too, must have known in the glittering,
squalid middle a^es.
Here the streets are each o-iven over to
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00
01
CO
WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
33'
a separate occupation, one to the bakers,
one to the butchers, a third to the gun-
smiths, a popular booth, especially with
the mountain men. Petticoat lane displays
the discarded finery of the harem, some-
times, too, fine embroideries and marvel-
ously tinted brocades. The harness shops
are gay with all sorts of colored leather
trappings and bead headstalls with amu-
lets to keep the evil eye from the pack
ponies. Crude red and green cradles and
gaudily painted chests for the ladies, in
which to keep their finery, are sold at the
carpenter's. The tinsmiths ply a busy
trade in curiously wrought metal belts,
while busier and more popular than all is
the inevitable coffee booth.
MEDIEVAL COSTUMES AT SCODRA
And the motley crowd who jostle each
other in and out of the narrow ways ! A
Mohammedan Beg swaggers by in the
cumberous fustinella, the plaited white
shirt worn by the Greeks, but seen in
its greatest glory on the Albanians.
Here a group of wild men and women
from the mountains, the former stalking
stealthily in front, their ever-searching
eyes on the lookout for the enemy who
may be in hiding, the latter carrying
heavy loads on their shoulders, possiblv
for a walk of ten hours !
Their costume is one of the most
curious in existence. That of the men
consists of white homespun, medieval-
looking leg gear, heavily striped and
braided in black ; an open vest, the front
braided and cut in zigzags, and over this
a black sleeveless wool jacket with a
square fringed collar, the whole topped
by a white fez. This black jacket is worn
for George Kastoriot or Skenderbeg, one
of the few great men the country has pro-
duced. He gathered the tribes together
and held all the land against the Turks
till he was killed, in 1467, and his people
still cherish his memory so dearly that
they wear mourning for him. The women
wear short, very stiff skirts of the same
homespun, white and black alternating in
the stripes, waistcoat and long white
coats of the same material ornamented
in red and blue.
But older still is the dress of the town
men and boys of the poorer classes — a
white tunic and drawers tied about the
waist with a red sash and topped with a
fez. This without the fez is the costume
of the barbarians on the Greek and
Roman vases. If this is the oldest, the
palm for the ugliest is easily borne off by
the well-to-do Christian women. The
wearer is hardly able to get along at all
in her high-heeled shoes and with the
enormous weight of the material used in
her trousers, which she has to hold up
with both hands, and then is only able to
waddle. These women go veiled in the
streets and swathe themselves in a shape-
less scarlet coat with a square collar
pinned up to the head, the whole braided
in black. Their husbands and sons affect
jaunty jackets of dark red so heavily em-
broidered as to appear black, but then
everybody of importance is brave with
embroidery in Scodra and wears garments
that are marvels of the art of needle-
work, with the comforting conviction
that the fashions will never change and
that clothes will last a lifetime and can
then be passed on to the servants and de-
pendents of the family.
At night Scodra was uncanny ; it is un-
safe even for the natives to venture out
after dark. Few houses showed a light,
and all was silent and mysterious. The
last night of our stay we were aroused
towards dawn by hearing a stray shot or
two, which soon grew into a perfect
fusillade, a bell tolled, and as the sun
rose the Sultan's unkempt troops turned
out, each munching his ration of dry
bread as he rode (all hunched up on the
small pony) after the possible malefac-
tors. We thought the massacre of which
the town lives in ever present dread had
really begun, and we were greatly re-
lieved to learn that the commotion was
only caused by robbers in the ward.
We tore ourselves regretfully from bar-
baric Scodra, so brilliant by day. so de-
pressing by night, for much still lay
before us, so back across the lake we
went, and were welcomed by our friends-
in Cettinje as if from out of the lion's
den. With many promises to return
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
another year we retraced our steps to
Ragusa, there to repair the ravages
travel had made on ourselves and our
linen, and enjoy the luxuries of civiliza-
tion before starting again for the interior.
IN HERZEGOVINA
After Albania, a Turkish province ad-
ministered, or rather not administered,
by the Turk, we were forcibly struck
with the prosperous appearance of the
people of Herzegovina and Bosnia, Turk-
ish possessions until 1878, when they
were, after the revolt, handed over to
Austria to be governed. The conditions
were said to be as bad then as they are
now, in parts of the Sultan's dominions,
where there is no safety for life or prop-
erty. Today Austria administers the
country (under the nominal control of
the Porte) wisely and paternally, regard-
ing the religious and other customs of the
people, with the result that the Moslems
and Christians live side by side in the
greatest peace and amity.
We took the railroad, which has been
recently constructed, from Ragusa to
Mostar. Soon the tropical vegetation of
the coast had been left behind, the train
crawling steadily up through grand
mountain scenery. We made several
stops, when wild women from the hills of
Herzegovina, in white linen trousers and
tunics, their legs incased in top boots,
peered shyly at us, afraid to meet our
eyes, much less face the camera. We
passed several train-loads of peasants
traveling fourth class in vans marked
"12 horses or 30 people," and drew up at
the capital of Herzegovina, Mostar.
The town is thoroughly Oriental, beau-
tifully situated on both sides of the rap-
idly flowing Narenta, with many minarets
picturesquely breaking the sky line. The
two quarters of the city are connected
bv a superb old stone bridge, with a span
of a hundred feet and over 60 feet above
the stream. Tradition attributes it to the
Romans (though it was probably built by
one of the early Sultans), and also says
that great difficulty was found in building
the foundations, until some one had the
happy inspiration of burying two lovers
beneath the piers, after which all went
well.
Leaving Mostar, we entered the great
defile of the Narenta, a wild and rocky
gorge, had a glimpse of the Prenj Moun-
tains towering to the right, reached the
top of the Ivan Plana, the watershed
between the Black Sea and the Adriatic,
passed through a tunnel, and emerged
into Bosnia proper. As we descended
toward Sarajevo the country began to
assume an entirely different aspect to
anything else we had seen in the Penin-
sula; the wild gorges and rocky peaks
gave place to fertile river beds and beau-
tifully wooded hills, the little villages
being very quaint and distinctive. The
houses have extremely steep-pitched,
shingled roofs and are built, even the
modern ones, without chimneys, the
smoke escaping as best it can.
Sarajevo, "the Damascus of the
North," so called from the number and
importance of its mosques, is a most
curious mixture of a European and an
Oriental city. It lies in the wide valley,
on both sides of the Miljacka. The
Austrian quarters are situated along the
river bank, while the native houses strag-
gle picturesquely up the sides of the in-
closing hills, and the population is as
mixed as the architecture. As the largest
city in the province, it is an important
military post ; the streets are full of smart
officers and their wives, as well as the
officials of the Austrian government,
while the native population is varied and
includes not only the Greek and Catholic
Christians, the Moslem Bosnians, some
gipsies, a few Turks, and people from the
neighboring states, but quite a colony of
the Jews who are the direct descendants
of those who, strangely enough, found
refuge in Bosnia at the time of the Span-
ish Inquisition, and who still speak
Spanish and are called Spaniards. Fri-
day, Saturday, and Sunday are respect-
ively the Moslem, Jewish, and Christian
Sabbaths, when the town is less lively,
but on other days there is always some-
thing doing, especially in the Bazar,
WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
333
where the different types
and costumes are seen to the
best advantage. Unfortu-
nately this trading center is
now almost entirely given
up to the sale of cheap Aus-
trian manufactured goods ;
this is particularly disap-
pointing, as the Bosnian is a
born craftsman, combining
great taste in color and de-
sign with dexterity in hand-
ling his material. The gov-
ernment has opened schools
for both sexes for training
in the manufacture of text-
iles, rugs, inlay and metaL
work, but to us, watching
the streets in the Bazar,
where the cross-legged, tur-
baned men were at work on
all sorts of leather, was by
far more fascinating. They
fashion this material of
every conceivable shade into
bags, belts, harness, and
shoes of every size and for
every national costume,
from the high, loose, lemon-
tinted boot the Turkish
women wear in the street to
the clumsy, elaborate shoe
for the countryman, with
no heels and a turned-up,
pointed toe, most craftily
worked and ornamented in
another colored leather.
We became quite chummy
with a fair-haired, blue-eyed
young Bosnian whom we
met in the Bazar, and who
called himself a "Turk," as
do so many of the Mos-
lems. To our surprise he offered to
show us the interior of the Husef Beg
Mosque, and he seemed much pleased
when we admired its lofty proportions.
He also took us to a coffee-house or
"kavanna," patronized entirely by na-
tives— really a garden inclosed with a
lattice fence, the humbler guests sitting
on wooden benches under the trees, the
COUNTRY WOMAN, HERZEGOVINA (SEE PAGE 332)
more exalted in pretty, thatched- roof eJ
summer-houses on each side. The coffee
booth was aglow with shining brass
utensils and bright charcoal fire. Twink-
ling lights brought out the dark, rich
dress of the well-to-do town Moslems, in
fez, slippers, black silk trousers, and
jaunty little jackets embroidered in gold,
who were sipping the delicious coffee,
334 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
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WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
335
SARAJEVO PACK PONIES EN ROUTE TO -MARKET
smoking cigarettes, and listening with
great contentment to wild gipsy music or
monotonous ballads of long dead kings.
Coffee and cigarettes, everywhere good
and cheap, seem to be the chief articles
of subsistence of the Bosnians, who con-
sume an incredible amount of both (we
were told some of the men limited them-
selves to 100 each per day), and though
we have watched them at all hours at
work in their little open-fronted shops,
we rarely saw them eat any solid food !
A FEW DAYS IN BOSNIA
But to see the country as it was in the
old, unregenerate days before the Aus-
trian occupation, we went to Jayce. This
little town now lies off the beaten track,
but was once the center of the important
Ikinyat of Jayce, and is today the pret-
tiest place imaginable, with its quaint
shingled or stucco painted houses,
mosques, and fountains. The surround-
ing country is lovely, the falls, just above
the town, where the Pliva, flowing from
the lake of Jesero, precipitates itself into
the Yrbas below in a leap of a hundred
feet, being really remarkable. We drove
one morning to Jesero, not far away, on
the lake of the same name, between
deeply wooded hills, which afford good
cover to all sorts of game, while on the
336 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
HERZEGOVINIAN WOMEN IN THE STREETS OF SAINT SAVINA
WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
337
MOSLEM WOMAN, MOSTAR, HERZEGOVINA
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
lake the wild ducks were so tame that
they swam almost within reach. The
village, set in its mass of verdure, sug-
gested a scene in Surrey, but the mina-
rets, the veiled women, and the little girls,
with their hair and hands dyed with the
all-popular henna, reminded us that we
were still in the East.
Market day brought into the open
market place country people from all the
surrounding farms and hills. Every one
had something to sell and to buy. The
pottery man's wares, designed for house-
hold utensils, were popular with the
housewives and gave a lovely splash of
green and gold to that part of the square.
All sorts of grain and seeds were for sale
in loosely woven baskets, while the sheep
and goats had an entire plateau to them-
selves. Several itinerant traders were
doing a lively business in bright glass
beads among the younger women, who
make them into belts and other dress
trimmings, while strung on wire they
were bought in the form of bracelets and
necklaces.
The peasants were quite as much inter-
ested in us as we were in their costumes,
and much friendliness prevailed, smiles
and pats on the shoulder taking the place
of words. Screwing up our courage, we
tackled a dark young beauty, smoking
a cigarette with a charmingly nonchalant
air, and asked her if she would be willing
to sell her belt and apron. She was at
first too astonished and amused to answer,
but finally coyly consented. A friend
came up to see what was happening,
this one a handsome blonde, her husband
in tow. She was also willing to sell any
part of her costume, and promptly began
such an alarming unfastening that we
hastily suggested the garments could be
delivered later.
Soon the fame of the crazy "Herr-
schaften," who were willing to pay good
money for old clothes, spread through
the country-side, and before long the
space outside the inn was crowded with
what the distracted proprietor called "ein
Jahrmarkt." Crowds of peasants were
displaying their wares and good na-
turedly trying to oust each other, while
one woman, we were sure, was offering
her baby as an extra inducement to the
collector, as we called the gentleman of
our party. Aside from the amusement,
it was rather pathetic to see how much a
little ready money meant for these hard-
working, honest souls, who would tramp
hours with bits of their finery, embroid-
ered garments, and fine old brass orna-
ments to sell them to us for a few
kronen.
On a showery morning we drove off
from Jayce, our plunder following in a
second carriage ; our drivers, two gay
young Moslems, who entertained us
vastly with their wild bursts of song, by
charring every one on the road, and by
flirting outrageously with all the peasant
women we met. The way lay through
magnificent scenery, past scattered settle-
ments and lonely haus, where we always
halted for the inevitable coffee, the
charm of the East lying over all until we
drove into the district town of Banja-
luka. Here, after a night spent in lodg-
ings off the stable yard, the inn being
full, we started by rail back to common-
place Europe. In a few hours we were
out o'f Bosnia. The East, its scenery,
mystery, and costumes were left behind;
the crown lands of Hungary through
which we passed seemed worthless in
comparison and the every-day life to
which we were returning remarkably
tame.
WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
339
340
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
34'
•
342 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
JAYCE, BOSNIA: A GREEK ORTHODOX BEAUTY
WHERE EAST MEETS WEST
343
< •
JAYCE, BOSNIA, TURKISH FOUNTAIN
34-4 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
AN AMERICAN FABLE
BY GlFFORD PlNCHOT
CHIEF OF THE UNITED STATES FOREST SERVICE
THE conservation of our natural
resources is a subject which
has had little attention in the
past; but it is so simple, so elementary,
that it might almost be told in words
like those of the old fairy tales that we
all loved when we were boys and girls.
It might run in this way:
Once upon a time there was a young
man who had been given a great prop-
erty in a distant region, and left home to
take possession of it. When he reached
his property he first made himself ac-
quainted with it. As he explored it and
studied its value he began to think how
he would make his living out of it. The
problem was not a hard one.
He found that his property was won-
derfully rich, and supplied his needs at
the cost of far less exertion than he
would have had to make at home — a fair
land, well watered, well timbered, and
abounding in game and fruits, with
broad meadows for cattle and horses and
sheep, and with no small store of rare
and curious minerals, and an outcrop of
excellent coal. Life was easy, and he
lived lavishly and joyously at first, after
the initial hard work of moving in and
building his house and raising his first
crops was over. He had far more land
than he could use, far more game; and
what he lacked he was able to buy from
home with furs, with timber, with min-
erals, and with the surplus of his crops.
By and by he saw and liked a girl and
finally married her. Together they pros-
pered on their property, which seemed
too rich to make it necessary for them to
trouble about the future. Game was
still plentiful, though less so than at first ;
the timber, though growing less, was
still abundant enough to last longer than
they could hope to live ; by breaking new
land they could always count on mar-
velous crops ; the coal was a little harder
to get at, but still close to the surface,
and besides the man only dug out the
easiest, and when the earth began to
cave in started again at a new place.
His stock, pastured on the meadows, had
trampled out some grass, but there was
still no lack. That some day strangers
would possess their property when they
had done with it, and find it somewhat
run down, did not trouble these two
good people at all.
But children had come to them with
the years, and by and by these children
began to grow up. Then the point of
view of the man and his wife changed.
They wanted to see their sons and
daughters provided for and settled on
their home property, and they began to
see that what was enough and to spare
for them would not support all their chil-
dren in the same comfort unless they
themselves used it with better foresight.
Through thinking of their children they
were led to live more in the future.
They looked forward and said to
themselves, "Not only must we meet our
own needs from this property, but we
must see to it that our children come in
for their fair share of it, so that after a
while the blessedness we have had here
may be carried on to them." So the
family established itself. The man be-
came respected and his children grew up
around him ; and when in the fulness of
time he passed away and his children
took the place in which he had stood, be-
cause of his foresight and care, they en-
joyed the same kind of prosperity he had
enjoyed.
It is a perfectly simple story ; we all of
us can name scores of men who have
done this same thing. The men and the
women who do it are not famous, are
not regarded as remarkable in any way;
* An address to the National Geographic Society, January 31, 1908.
346
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
they are simply good, every-day, average
citizens, who are carrying out the duties
of the average citizen.
THE STORY OF OUR NATION
Now once upon a time there was a
young nation which left its home and
moved on to a new continent. As soon
as the people who formed the first settle-
ments began to examine the value and
condition of this new continent, they
found it marvelously rich in every pos-
sible resource. The forests were so vast
that they were not a blessing in the early
days, but a hindrance. The soil was so
rich and there was so much of it that
they were able at first only to scratch the
edges of their great property. It was
quite plain to these people in the early
times that however much they might
cover, however much they might waste,
there was going to be plenty left. They
found wonderfully rich deposits of ore,
great oil fields, and vast stretches of the
richest bituminous and anthracite coal
lands ; noble rivers making fertile broad
expanses of meadow, rich alluvial prai-
ries, great plains covered with countless
herds of buffalo and antelope, mountains
in the west filled with minerals, and on
both coasts opportunities richer than
any nation had ever found elsewhere
before.
They entered into this vast possession
and began to use it. They did not need
to think much about how they used their
coal, or oil, or timber, or water — it would
last — and they began to encroach on the
supply with freedom and in confidence
that there would always be plenty. The
only word with which they described
what they had, when they talked about
it, was the word inexhaustible.
Let us see for a moment what the
course of development of this young na-
tion was. First of all they needed men
and women to settle on the land and
bring up children and have a stake in
the country. That was absolutely neces-
sary before there could develop the great
nation which some of them saw ahead.
As the population spread, there arose a
need that great systems of transporta-
tion should be built to knit the country
together and provide for the interchange
of its products. These railroads called
for iron, coal, and timber in great quan-
tities. Then began an unprecedented
demand upon the forests. Not only
could they not build those transconti-
nental railroad lines without millions
upon millions of railroad ties cut from
the forests of the country, but they could
not mine the iron and coal except as the
forests gave them the means of timber-
ing their mines, transporting the ore, and
disposing of the finished product. The
whole civilization which they built up
was conditioned on iron, coal, and
timber.
As they developed their continent,
richer than any other, from the east coast
to the west, new resources became re-
vealed to them, new interests took pos-
session of them, and they used the old
resources in new ways. In the East,
the rivers meant to them only means of
transportation ; in the West they began
to see that the rivers meant first of all
crops; that they must put the rivers on
the land before they could grow wheat,
and alfalfa, and fruits, and all the things
that make the West rich. They found
that to feed the vast population which
had grown up in the eastern country
they must have the vast ranges of the
West to grow meat; that the resources
which produced the wheat, and the
meat, and the cotton, and the iron, and
coal, and timber, all together made the
working capital of a great nation, and
that the nation could not grow unless it
had all of these things. In taking pos-
session of them, our nation used them
with greater effectiveness, greater en-
ergy and enterprise, than any other na-
tion had ever shown before. Nothing-
like our growth, nothing like our wealth,
nothing like the average happiness of
our people, can be found elsewhere; and
the fundamental reason for this is, on>
the one side, the vast natural resources
which we had at hand, and, on the other
side, the character and ability and power
of our people.
AN AMERICAN FABLE
347
Now what have we done with these
resources which have made us great, and
what is the present condition in which
this marvelously vigorous nation finds
itself? The keynote of our times is "de-
velopment." Every man, from New
York to San Francisco, wants the devel-
opment of the natural resources, the ad-
vantages, the opportunities which sur-
round him, his neighbors, and his
friends. Any one who questions the
wisdom of any of the methods we are
using in bringing that development to
pass, because he believes we are making
mistakes that will be expensive later, is
in danger of being considered an enemy
to prosperity. He is in danger of hav-
ing it thought of him that he does not
take pride in our great achievements,
that he is not a very good American.
But in reality it is no sign that a man
lacks pride in the United States and the
wonderful things our people have done
in developing this great country because
he wants to see that development go on
indefinitely. On the contrary, real pa-
triotism and pride in our country make
it the first of all duties to see that our
nation shall continue to prosper. In
sober truth, we have brought ourselves
into a present condition in which a very
serious diminution of some of our re-
sources is upon us.
WHAT A TIMBER FAMINE WOULD MEAN
A third of this country was originally
covered with what were, all in all, the
most magnificent forests of the globe —
a million square miles of timber land. In
the short time, as time counts in the life
of nations, that we have been here, we
have all but reached the end of them.
We thought it unimportant until lately
that we have been destroying by fire as
much timber as we have used. But we
have now reached the point where the
growth of our forests is but one-third of
the annual cut, while we have in store
timber enough for only twenty years at
our present rate of use. This wonder-
ful development, which would have been
impossible without the cutting of the for-
ests, has brought us where we really face
their absolute exhaustion within the
present generation. And we use five or
six times more timber per capita than the
European nations. A timber famine
will touch every man, woman, and child
in all the land ; it will affect the daily life
of every one of us ; and yet without con-
sideration, without forecast, and without
foresight, we have placed ourselves, not
deliberately, but thoughtlessly, in a posi-
tion where a timber famine is one of the
inevitable events of our near future.
Canada cannot supply us, for she will
need her timber herself. Siberia cannot
supply us, for the timber is too far from
water transportation. South America
cannot supply us, because the timbers of
that vast continent are of a different
character from those we use, and ill-
adapted to our needs. We must suffer
because we have carelessly wasted this
great condition of success. It is impos-
sible to repair the damage in time to es-
cape suffering.
But forests only begin the story of our
impaired capital. Our anthracite coals are
said to be in danger of exhaustion in fifty
years, and our bituminous coals early
in the next century ; some of our older
oil fields are already exhausted ; the nat-
ural gas has been wasted — burning night
and day in many towns of this country
until the supply has failed. Our iron
deposits grow less each year. Our
ranges in the West, from which we first
drove the buffalo to cover them again
with cattle and sheep, are capable of sup-
porting but about one-half what they
could under intelligent management ;
and the price of beef is raised. Nearly
every one of our wonderful resources we
have used without reasonable foresight
and reasonable care, and as each be-
comes exhausted a heavier burden of
hardship will be laid upon us as a people.
Now what is our remedy? The rem-
edy is the perfectly simple one of com-
mon sense applied to national affairs as
common sense is applied to personal af-
fairs. This is no abstruse or difficult
question. We have hitherto as a nation
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
taken the same course as did at first the
young man who came into possession of
his new property. It is time now for a
change.
It is true that some natural resources
renew themselves, while others do not.
Our mineral resources once gone are
gone forever. It may appear, therefore,
at first thought that conservation does
not apply to them, since they can be used
only once ; but this is far from being the
fact. Methods of coal mining, for in-
stance, have been permitted in this coun-
try which take out on the average but
half of the coal, and then in a short time
the roof sinks in on the other half, which
thereafter can never be mined. Oil and
natural gas also have been and are being
•exploited with great waste, and as
though there never could be an end to
them. The forests we can replace at
rgreat cost and with an interval of suffer-
ing. The soil which is washed from the
surface of our farms every year to the
.amount of a billion tons, making, with
the further loss of fertilizing elements
carried away in solution, the heaviest tax
the farmer has to pay, may in the course
•of centuries be replaced by the chemical
disintegration of the rock; but it is de-
•cidedly wiser to keep what we have by
•careful methods of cultivation. We may
very profitably stop putting our farms
into our streams, to be dug out at great
•expense through river and harbor appro-
priations. Fertile soil is not wanted in
the bed of a stream, and it is wanted on
-the surface of the soil of the farms and
the forest-covered slopes of the moun-
tains; yet we spend m'lllons upon mil-
lions of dollars every year removing
from our rivers what ought never to
have got into them.
A MONOPOLY OF OUR GREATEST NATURAL
RESOURCE;, WATER POWER, SHOULD
BE PREVENTED
Besides exhausting the unrenewable
;and impairing the renewable resources,
we have left unused vast resources which
are capable of adding enormously to the
^wealth of the country. Our streams
have been used mainly in the West for
irrigation and mainly in the East for
navigation. It has not occurred to us
that a stream is valuable not merely for
one, but for a considerable number of
uses ; that these uses are not mutually
exclusive, and that to obtain the full ben-
efit of what the stream can do for us we
should plan to develop all uses together.
For example, when the national govern-
ment builds dams for navigation on
streams, it often disregards the possible
use, for power, of the water that flows
over those dams. Engineers say that
many hundred thousand horse-power are
going to waste over government dams in
this way. Since a fair price for power,
where it is in demand, is from $20 to $80
per horse-power per year, it will be seen
that the government has here — devel-
oped yet lying idle — a resource capable
of adding enormously to the natural
wealth. So, also, in developing the
western streams for irrigation, in many
places irrigation and power might be
made to go hand in hand.
If the public does not see to it that the
control of water power is kept in the
hands of the public, we are certain in the
near future to find ourselves in the grip
of those who will be able to control, with
a monopoly absolutely without parallel
in the past, the daily life of our people.
Let us suppose a man in a western town,
in a region without coal, rising on a cold
morning, a few years hence, when in-
vention and enterprise have brought to
pass the things which we can already
foresee as coming in the application of
electricity. He turns on the electric
light made from water power ; his break-
fast is cooked on an electric stove heated
by the power of the streams ; his morn-
ing newspaper is printed on a press
moved by electricity from the streams;
he goes to his office in a trolley car
moved by electricity from the same
source. The desk upon which he writes
his letters, the merchandise which he
sells, the crops which he raises, will have
been brought to him or will be taken to
market from him in a freight car moved
by electricity. His wife will run her
AN AMERICAN FABLE
349
sewing-machine or her churn and fac-
tories will turn their shafts and wheels
by the same power. In every activity of
his life that man and his family and his
neighbors will have to pay toll to those
who have been able to monopolize the
great motive power of electricity made
from water power, if that monopoly is
allowed to become established. Never
before in the history of this or any other
free country has there existed the possi-
bility of such intimate daily contact be-
tween a monopoly and the life of the
average citizen.
It has not yet occurred to our people
that this great power should be con-
served for the use of the public. We
have regarded it as a thing to be given
away to any man who would take it. We
have carried over our point of view, de-
rived from the early conditions, when it
was a godsend to have a man come into
the country to develop power, and we
were willing to give him anything to in-
duce him to come. We have carried
over that point of view into a time when
the dread of a monopoly of this kind
ought to be in the mind of the average
man everywhere. That is an instance
of a resource neglected from the point of
view of the public.
But this is a time to consider not one
resource, but all resources together.
Already here and there small associa-
tions of citizens have become possessed
of certain facts, and have begun to
work at certain sides of what is funda-
mentally one great problem. We have
a drainage association, whose object is
to make habitable millions upon millions
of acres now lying waste in swamps all
over the country, but capable of support-
ing millions of people in comfort. We
have forestry associations, waterway as-
sociations, irrigation associations, asso-
ciations of many kinds touching this
problem of conservation at different
points, each endeavoring to benefit the
common weal along !ts own line, but
each interested only in its own particular
piece of the work and unaware that it is
attacking the outside, not the heart, of
the problem.
Now a greater work appears. Since
this problem of the conservation of nat-
ural resources is a single question, each
of these various bodies that have been
working at different phases of it must
come together on a common platform.
By the joining of these units we shall
have a mass of intelligent, interested,
public-spirited citizens anxious to adopt
a new point of view about this country
of ours.
That is the crux of the whole matter—
a new point of view about our country.
We have been so busy getting rich, de-
veloping, and growing, so proud of our
growth, that we have let things go on
until some intolerable abuse has com-
pelled immediate action to cut it off. It
is time that we put an end to this kind of
opportunism, of mere drifting. We must
take the point of view taken by the aver-
age prudent business man, or man in any
walk of life who has property and is in-
terested in it. What the average man
does in his own affairs is to foresee trou-
ble and avoid it if he can. What this
nation of ours is doing in this funda-
mental matter of natural resources is to
run right up against the trouble and make
that trouble inevitable before taking any
step to head it off. But it should not take
long to reach the stage where we shall
deliberately plan to avoid the difficulties
which can be foreseen, if we can bring
together all who have already begun to
concern themselves with one or another
aspect of the conservation problem.
THE PRESENT IS ONE OF THE MOST CRITI-
CAL POINTS OF OUR HISTORY
This nation has, on the continent of
North America, three and a half million
square miles. What shall we do with
it? How can we make ourselves and
our children happiest, most vigorous and
efficient, and our civilization the highest
and most influential, as we use that
splendid heritage? Shall not the nation
undertake to answer that question in the
35°
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
spirit of wisdom, prudence, and fore-
sight? There is reason to think we are
on the verge of doing this very thing.
We are on the verge of saying to our-
selves, Let us do the best we can with our
natural resources; let us find out what
we have, how they can best be used, how
they can best be conserved. Above all,
let us have clearly in mind the great and
fundamental fact that this nation will
not end in the year 1950, or a hundred
years after that, or five hundred years
after that; that we are just beginning a
national history the end of which we
cannot see, since we are still young. In
truth, we are at a critical point in that
history. As President Roosevelt has
said, we are at the turning of the ways.
We may pass on along the line we have
been following, exhaust our natural re-
sources, continue to let the future take
care of itself; or we may do the simple,
obvious, common-sense thing in the in-
terest of the nation, just as each of us
does in his own personal affairs.
On the way in which we decide to han-
dle this great possession which has been
given us, on the turning which we take
now, hangs the welfare of those who
are to come after us. Whatever success
we may have in any other line of na-
tional endeavor; whether we regulate
trusts properly; whether we control our
great public-service corporations as we
should; whether capital and labor adjust
their relations in the best manner or
not — whatever we may do with all these
and other questions, behind and below
them all is this fundamental question,
Are we going to protect our springs of
prosperity, our sources of well-being, our
raw material of industry and commerce
and employer of capital and labor com-
bined, or are we going to dissipate them ?
According as we accept or ignore our
responsibility as trustees of the nation's
welfare, our children and our children's
children for uncounted generations will
call us blessed or will lay their suffering
at our doors. We shall decide whether
their lives, on the average, are to be lived
in a flourishing country, full of all that
helps make men comfortable, happy,
strong, and effective, or whether their
lives are to be lived in a country like the
miserable outworn regions of the earth
which other nations before us have pos-
sessed without foresight and turned into
hopeless deserts.
We are no more exempt from the
operation of natural laws than are the
people of any other part of the world.
When the facts are squarely before us,
when the magnitude of the stake is
clearly before our people, surely this
question will be decided aright.
HUNTING BEARS ON HORSEBACK
THE remarkable illustrations on
pages 352-355 were sent to this
magazine by Mr Alan D. Wil-
son of Philadelphia, a member of the
National Geographic Society. They were
taken by him in October, 1907, during a
hunting trip in Wyoming. In sending
the photographs Mr Wilson writes:
The wolverine and bear we ran with
John B. Goff's pack, which we followed
on horseback, and which, by the way, is
the greatest sport I have ever had. I
send a photograph of the five hounds,
but unfortunately I did not get a good
photograph of the eighteen terriers and
mongrels, who made up the fighting
pack, which I regret extremely, as they
were the cleverest, gamest lot of little
rascals I ever saw, and they were always
the ones who had to bear the brunt of the
trouble.
The wolverine is interesting and the
photograph is, I think, almost unique,
for they are not only rare, but generally
HUNTING BEARS ON HORSEBACK
35'
prefer to go over the rimrock, when the
dogs are after them, rather than tree.
All our hunting was done in the na-
tional timber reserve just east of the
Yellowstone Park, in Big Horn County,
Wyoming. It is a high, rough, broken,
mountain country, and we were hunting
on the headwaters of the following
creeks flowing into the north fork of the
Shoshone River: Eagle, Kitty, Fish-
hawk, Sheep, East and West Black
Water, Wapiti or Elk Fork, Gun Barrel
or Gothic, Goff, and Clearwater — a coun-
try about twenty-five miles east and west
and thirty-five miles north and* south,
which lies about fifty miles west of Cody,
from which point we outfitted." Air the
game was killed south of the Shoshone
River.
In as rough a country as this is, it
takes very good horse flesh to do the
work, for the bear travels pretty fast,
there is plenty of down timber in the
valleys, and a great deal of hard climb-
ing. Mr Goff has a picked lot of horses,
bigger than the usual western pony, and
therefore up to their work, and all of his
horses will either pack or ride; so that
we were able to have four fresh horses a
day and then not work a horse again for
three or four days, as he had twenty-two
horses in the outfit. I never could see
how a horse could be as sure-footed or
go in places these horses did, for in the
course of bear hunting we crossed every
divide from Eagle Creek to Elk Fork,
six in number, pretty well up toward
headwater and without a trail other than
game trails, and only one horse went
down on the trip, and that was in ford-
ing a deep stream. As an instance of
their hardihood, we jumped one bear at
ii a m., followed him on horseback until
5 p. m., a part of which time we lost the
dogs and spent a couple of hours before
we heard them again ; finally got in coun-
try we could not ride, tied up the horses,
who were soaking wet, went. on for an
hour on foot, and killed the bear at 6
p. m. By the time we had dressed him
it began to get dark, with the result that
we lost our horses, laid out all night on
the top of a mountain, and in the morn-
ing, when we found the horses, none of
them were stiff or sore, although there
had been a hard frost in the night.
The dogs of course deserve the chief
credit. Goff has a splendid pack, which
is thoroughly broken not to run deer, elk,
or sheep. The hounds of course do the
main: work, from the time the bear track
is picked up until the bear is jumped, but
they are not keen to go in and fight, and
unless you have something that will do
this, and dp-it sufficiently vigorously to
retard progress, there is not much
chance of keeping up with them on
horseback and getting a shot at the bear.
This is where the fighting pack becomes
all important, and it is the most difficult
thing to get a dog properly adapted to
the work. He must be willing to run for
an hour or so with the hounds, with only
anticipation to help him along, until the
bear is jumped. Then he must have not
only pluck enough to go in and fight, but
intelligence enough to know the only
chance a dog has with a bear is to take
an occasional nip, and then get out of
the way ; and, further, he must have
sufficient size and bone to be able to keep
up with the hounds over a big, rough
country.
We had almost everything in the
pack : Mongrel bull terriers, stag hounds
(a cross between a stag hound and a
bull terrier), an old English sheep dog
(a cross between a fox terrier and a
shepherd), who, by the way, was the
greatest hunter and gamest dog I ever
saw. He had had his thigh broken by
a grizzly six months before, and while
with us was bitten through the face,
but, with only three legs, he was always
at the head of the fighting pack. We
had some Irish terriers and six Aire-
dales. The bull terriers go in and take
hold and get killed. The stag hounds
won't stay long with the hounds unless
the bear is properly jumped. Only oc-
casionally will a mongrel develop the
proper qualities. The Irish terriers are
too small to properly run the country,
but the big, sturdy Airedales are just
352
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
HUNTING BEARS ON HORSEBACK
353
Photo by Alan D. Wilson, Philadelphia
WOLVERINE CLI.MIUXr, A TREE TO ESCAPE PURSUING DOGS
354 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photo by Alan D. Wilson, Philadelphia
BEAR CLIMBING A TREE TO ESCAPE PURSUING DOGS
HUNTING BEARS ON HORSEBACK
355
Photo by Alan D. Wilson, Philadelphia
THE FISH HAWK CREEK BEAR
356
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
the dogs for the work. They have a
surprisingly good nose — good enough to
run a trail themselves if it is warm —
and are therefore interested before the
bear is jumped. They will stay all day
with the hounds, and instinctively they
seem to know just exactly how to fight
a bear to get the best results with the
least damage to themselves. Added to
this, they are as game as a dog can be
and are pleasant to have about.
A brown bear which we ran into a
hole, where the dogs followed her, pun-
ished the dogs severely. There were only
eight dogs in at the finish, and every
one of them was badly bitten or clawed,
except Old Captain, the lead hound of
the pack, who wisely would not go in
the hole ; yet every one of them, after
coming out and licking his wounds for
a few minutes, went back for more, and
after we had finally smoked out the bear,
again brought her to bay in the bed of a
stream, where Mrs Wilson killed her.
I am sorry that I have no good photo-
graph of the fighting pack, and espe-
cially of Don, the little cross between a
fox terrier and a shepherd. He looked
less like a bear dog than any animal I
ever saw, but his courage was really
pathetic, for he was sick and miserable
from his wounds, but could not be kept
at home, and when he got close to a
bear, it was perfectly evident that he was
seeing "red." Any game looked good to
him, however, for on the way home from
killing a bear he would joyfully tree
squirrels, and then put in the night
hunting pack rats and mice.
PERSIA: THE AWAKENING EAST
BY W. P. CRESSON
The following article is abstracted from a new book on Persia just pub-
lished by Messrs J. B. Lippincott Company, of Philadelphia, entitled "Persia,
the Awakening Hast'' by W. P. Cresson* Persia, one of the oldest kingdoms in
the world, is now undergoing a complete transformation in administration and
in commercial life, so that this admirable volume is particularly useful at the
present time. The author recently spent several months in Persia, being the
guest of the American Minister to Teheran, and had exceptional opportunities for
seeing the country. Particularly good chapters are: The Religions of Persia;
A Visit to the Sacred City of Kum; Hawking in Persia; Bagdad of Today; A
Pilgrimage to Kerbela; The Persian Gulf. The article is copyrighted by J. B.
Lippincott Co.
WE entered Persia by way of
the Caspian, stopping first,
however, at the wonderful
Russian oil-fields at Baku, near the Per-
sian frontier. Marco Polo, in his fasci-
nating book of travels, speaks of them as
follows :
"On the confines towards Georgianna
there is a fountain from which oil
springs in great abundance, insomuch
that a hundred ship-loads might be taken
from it at one time. This oil is not good
to use with food, but it is good to burn,
and is also used to anoint camels that
have the mange. People come from vast
distances to fetch it, for in all countries
around have they no other oil."
The oil-fields were exploited many
centuries before the arrival of the Rus-
sians, but it is only within the last twenty
years that the commerce in naphtha has
become the most important industry of
the Caucasus. Good Sir Marco would
have been surprised to know that future
generations would find in his "burning
spring" a mine of riches compared to
* Pp. 300. Illustrated. $3.50.
PERSIA: THE AWAKENING EAST
357
which the treasures of Golconda pale
into insignificance, and that on the desert
near by would arise a great city, peopled
by a restless throng of wealth-seekers
drawn from every corner of the globe.
The drive from the railway station to
the oil-fields lay along a slippery road,
deep with oily mud, into which our con-
veyance sank almost to the hub. By the
wayside, half-naked Tatars were busily
skimming the waste oil from the surface
of _ slimy pools and rivulets, and our
guide told us that even at this miserable
business they make an excellent profit.
To touch foot to the ground meant irre-
trievable ruin to boots and clothing, so
that every one (even the natives) rode,
and a file of rickety vehicles stretched in
a continuous procession along the nar-
row highway. Every form of wheeled
conveyance was represented, from
spring wagons of American make to
high Turcoman carts set on enormous
wheels often eight feet or more in diam-
eter.
The surface of the country surround-
ing the oil-fields seemed literally to ex-
ude crude petroleum, and the stench
from the slough through which we were
slowly traveling was indescribable, al-
though fortunately by this time we were
beginning to grow accustomed to the
odor.
As we approached nearer, the clank of
pulleys and windlass filled the air. In
every one of the tall timber pyramids
that covered the mouth of the narrow
"borings" a Tatar workman watched the
simple mechanism that lets down a long
metal bucket into the bowels of the earth
and draws it up filled with crude petro-
leum mixed with water and sand. Within
recent years American tools and methods
have increased the output of the wells a
hundred-fold. The present system of
boring is copied from the methods used
in the Pennsylvania oil-fields, and many
of the engineers who direct the opera-
tion for the Russian companies are
Americans or Englishmen. In the old
days, under the reign of the petroleum
monopoly, the Russian concessionaires
were content to confine their operations
to enlarging the natural wells and
springs of naphtha which rise to the sur-
face of the earth all over the plateau of
Bala-Khane.
But with the advent of foreigners
these primitive methods have been aban-
doned. The wells are now sunk far
down through sand and rock in search
of rich strata and fresh beds of oil sand,
and the costly instruments used repre-
sent the triumph of years of Yankee in-
genuity and experience in the oil-fields
of the New World. In spite of fears to
the contrary, there appears no end to the
supply of crude petroleum. Even at the
time of their maximum output, the flow
of oil from the wells of Baku was appar-
ently undiminished. Under the plateau
of Bala-Khane lies an underground sea
of naphtha, and in some places but a few
yards of oil-soaked earth covers this nat-
ural reservoir. Once the "crust" has
been pierced by the drill, the oil comes
gushing of its own accord to the surface,
driven by the force of natural gases.
Just before the riots of 1905, the yearly
output of the oil-wells of Baku amounted
to more than twelve and one-half million
tons of refined oil, and the most impor-
tant problem confronting the oil compa-
nies was that of mutually limiting their
output in order to keep the price at a
profitable figure.
During our visit we had an oppor-
tunity to view at close quarters the wild
hordes of Tatar workmen employed in
the oil-fields. A more abject and de-
graded lot of human beings it would be
difficult to find anywhere on the face of
the earth. Their villages of mud huts
were set down on the treeless, sandy
plain, far enough away from the wells
for them to light their cooking fires in
safety, and here we found the stench of
oil. added to the all-pervadirg odors of
Oriental housekeeping, almost overpow-
ering. Some of the foreign companies
make a pretense of housing their work-
men in long wooden sheds, which are
forcibly cleaned at rare intervals, but by
far the greater number live in rough en-
358
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photo and Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY MOHAMMAD AU, SHAH OF PERSIA, WEARING THE KAJAR
PERSIA: THE AWAKENING EAST
359
Photo and Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
HIS IMPERIAL HIGHNESS, THE CROWN PRINCE OF PERSIA
36°
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
bfl
PERSIA: THE AWAKENING EAST
361
campments, where they are at liberty to
satisfy their own ideals of comfort and
sanitation.
Most of these workmen in the oil-
fields are Mohammedans, and, strange to
say, their piety is a source of constant
annoyance to their employers. In view
of the recent controversy in the Amer-
ican newspapers concerning the oil-
tainted" contributions of a well-known
magnate to the funds of a foreign mis-
sionary society, the following incident
of our visit to the oil-fields of Bala-
Khane may not be without interest. As
we were being shown through the
pumping-house belonging to a Russian
company, our guide, a sturdy Dutchman
from the oil-fields of Pennsylvania, sud-
denly came upon a Tatar workman lying
prostrate, his face toward Mecca, on a
strip of greasy carpet among the idle
machinery. Without giving him time to
struggle to his feet, our friend raised
him more suddenly than gently with a
well-applied kick:
"Choist look at dese fellows !" he ex-
claimed, indignantly; "ve haf to vatch
dem or dey pray de whole tarn time!"
"Vat mit Mohammedan feast days and
Russian saints' days ve get no work done
at all. Vat ve need is a cargo of good
missionaries to convert de whole tarn
lot." he added vindictively.
Here is a new aspect of the missionary
question, which has, perhaps, never been
given proper consideration at home !
Shortly after the commencement of
the Japanese war a general strike broke
out at Baku, and the wild workmen of
Bala-Khane marched on the town, leav-
ing behind them, in place of the scene of
busv industry I have described, the fire-
blackened ruins of a few pump-houses
and the burning craters of hundreds of
oil-wells. Thus in the short space of a
few hours the petroleum industry of
Baku was literally wiped from the face
of the earth. But while the oil-fields
have never recovered their former pro-
ductiveness, the damage is now being
gradually repaired, and Russian oil once
more supplies the markets of southern
Europe and the middle East.
RUSSIAN J-. \TKRPRISE IN NORTHERN
PERSIA
The road leading from the shores of
the Caspian to the capital of Persia has
been open to general traffic for several
years. Considered merely as a financial
investment, the million and a half dollars
expended by the Russians in building
this fine highway may seem out of all
proportion to the returns, but there can
be no question as to the important part
it has played in forwarding Russian in-
terests in northern Persia. Its fame has
gone abroad through every caravansary
of the middle East, and where a railroad
would have disturbed a host of ancient
customs and privileges dear to the in-
habitants of the country, this new way
has only lightened the difficulties and
hardships that once beset travelers and
traffic on the old caravan road. Xe\v
villages are springing up everywhere
along the route, and the Russians take
good care that the inhabitants should
know that to Russian enterprise alone
this happy change in their fortunes is
due.
The engineering work of the Resht
post-road has been carried out in a thor-
oughly durable manner. Often hewn
from the solid rock of the mountain side
or crossing deep ravines by girder
bridges of the most modern construc-
tion, it forms a striking example of the
Russian policy of "peaceful penetration"
that owes its inception to the real "strong
man" of Russia, Serge de Witte.
Following the natural path of least re-
sistance, sometimes high above us on the
mountain side, sometimes winding along
the valley below, I could make out the
fading gray streak of what was once the
old Persian caravan track. From time
immemorial this ancient road had been
the irreat commercial highway between
the shores of the Black Sea and the rich
provinces of northern Persia. Most of
the trade of Khorassan still follows tin's
route until it reaches the Russian rail-
ways in the Caucasus, while merchandise
transported from Russia is sold in every
bazaar as far as the Afghan frontier.
362
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photo and Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
ARMENIAN GIRLS OF THE PROVINCE OF URUMIAH, WHERE THE PERSIAN DISTURB-
ANCES WERE GREATEST
PERSIA: THE AWAKENING EAST
363
Photo and Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
THE HIGH PRIEST SEYED ABDOLLAH MOSHTEHID, OF TEHERAN
364
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
PERSIA: THE AWAKENING EAST
365
The post carriages and four-wheeled
freight wagons brought from Europe
are still comparatively rare, and the
greater part of the merchandise is car-
ried by means of caravans and droves of
pack animals. During our first day's
journey we passed thousands of camels
traveling in long files stretching some-
times for a quarter of a mile without a
break, each fastened by a long cord at-
tached to a ring fixed in its supercilious
nose to the saddle of the one ahead. The
Bactrian camels used on these cold
mountain trails of northern Persia are
very different in appearance from the
gaunt, apocalyptic beasts seen in the des-
erts of Egypt. Indeed, the true Bactrian
is a very handsome animal (judged at
least by the standards of camel beauty),
his neck and shoulders covered with a
long growth of soft brown hair, which
hides the rude outlines of his powerful
frame. A good Persian camel is capa-
ble of carrying with ease a load of a
thousand pounds, and as they are often
the whole fortune of their owners, they
are treated with the best of care and
attention.
THROUGH A DESERT LAND
Now and again the white gleam of a
salt marsh, seen on the horizon, or the
pearly mist of a distant mirage would
persuade us that we were approaching
the life-giving presence of water — an
illusion which receded or disappeared on
our nearer approach.
The traveler, read in the poetry and
literature of the Golden East, soon
learns to appreciate the Oriental's point
of view in judging the beauties of na-
ture. Compared to the verdant scenery
of Europe, there is little to admire in
the landscape of northern Persia ; yet
these lonely wastes are not without a
certain wild beauty of their own. The
great drama of morning and evening
tints the desert with wonderful hues that
shift and blend like the changing colors
of the sea, and in the fierce light of noon-
day strange cloud shadows play across
its surface, relieving the monotonous
uniformity of rock and sand.
Contrast, indeed, is the keynote of
desert life. No gardens have ever
seemed to me half so beautiful as some
walled inclosure, filled with scanty rows
of orange and lemon trees, found at the
end of a long day's ride across the arid
Persian plain. No fruit has ever had so
rare a taste as the little yellow citrons
brought us by Persian peasants, in some
dusty caravansary, as we lay resting our
weary limbs among our saddle-bags on
the hard mud floor.
To the poets of Persia we owe the
common impression that their beloved
country is a land of gardens and flowers.
Their Oriental imagination has woven a
veil of romance about the "Fields of
Iran," while throughout the greater part
of the Shah's dominions the very reverse
of this legend of fertility is nearer the
truth. The life of the Persian peasant
is one long struggle with the adverse
forces of nature. Such rare cultivation
as we saw depended entirely on artificial
irrigation by means of underground
channels leading to distant reservoirs
among the mountains that generations
of toilers have hollowed out with in-
finite pains, often hundreds of feet below
the level of the land. The few villages
that we passed were miserable collec-
tions of mud huts whose inhabitants
earned a precarious existence by trading
with the travelers along the caravan
road.
A CITY OF CONTRASTS
The sentimental traveler visiting Te-
heran for the first time, who expects
to find in the Shah's capital some fabu-
lous city of the "Arabian Nights/' is
destined to be disappointed. Persia has
long since awakened from her golden
dream of the past. Like Japan, the
Land of the Lion and the Sun has fallen
under the spell of Western ideas, and
the Persian of today is striving to adapt
his ancient civilization to the way- and
customs of Europe with the same en-
ergy and lack of discrimination that
characterize the victorious sons of
Nippon.
In Persian eves, at least, Teheran is a
366
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
European city. The wide streets and
tree-lined avenues of the newer quarter
of the town date from the reign of Shah
Nasr-ed-Din, grandfather of the present
Shah, who returned from a visit to Eu-
rope fired with the ambition of trans-
forming his capital into an Oriental
Paris. But the Persian of the lower
classes is a fanatical conservative; the
strange madness that drives his rulers to
leave the blessed shores of Iran to wan-
der in infidel lands beyond the seas
seems to him wholly foreign and dis-
tasteful. The Shahs of the present dy-
nasty have spent large sums in enlarg-
ing and embellishing their capital, and
while Teheran can scarcely be said to
rival the natural beauties of Shiraz or
the architectural splendors of Ispahan,
it is now considered the metropolis of
Persia.
The climate of this part of the Iranian
plateau, varying from extreme heat in
summer to bitter cold during the winter
months, leaves much to be desired. On
account of the high elevation, sudden
and violent changes of temperature
occur ; and I remember witnessing, soon
after our arrival, the curious spectacle
of a rose garden in full bloom suddenly
overwhelmed and buried beneath a fall
of early snow. To these discomforts
must be added the high winds, which
raise clouds of choking dust and sand
from the broad unpaved streets during
the drv months of the year. Neverthe-
less, Teheran is a very healthful spot,
and in spite of the primitive methods of
sanitation still in vogue, the death rate
among its population remains compara-
tively low.
The varied types of humanity that go
to make up the population of the "City
of Contrasts" are perhaps never seen to
such striking advantage as on some
sunny winter's day on this favorite
promenade of the citizens of Teheran.
Threading his way carefullv through the
streams of traffic, a fat mollah ambles by
on a lazy mule, toward the mosque.
Next comes a smart young attache from
the foreign legations, on his way to play
polo on the Maidan, or a Cossack of the
Shah's body-guard, dressed as nearly
like a Russian soldier as possible. A
court official in a Parisian landau, sur-
rounded by a galloping troop of attend-
ants, goes charging through the crowd,
with loud cries of "Kabardah ! Kabar-
dah !" ("Make way! make way!").
Next, a wild-eyed dervish adds his loud
cries to the general confusion, in an in-
solent demand for the alms of the Faith-
ful; or a party of Persian women, in
baggy black pantaloons, their faces hid-
den by thick linen masks, pass in single
file, under the escort of a negro eunuch.
And at intervals the finishing touch is
added to this Oriental scene when a
tramway, crowded to the roof with na-
tive passengers, goes jostling its way
through the long files of camels and
pack-horses on their way to the ba-
zaars— perhaps the most popular Euro-
pean innovation in the Persian capital.
THE BAZAARS
While the broad streets and squares of
the new quarters of Teheran give the
many parts of the city quite a European
appearance, the older quarters that lie
about the bazaar still retain all the char-
acteristics of the Orient. Here, in a
labyrinth of narrow lanes and alleyways,
where even the oldest Teherani often
finds himself at a loss which way to turn,
centers the whole commercial life of the
city. In Teheran, as in most of the cities
of northern Persia, the main bazaar con-
sists of a series of long passageways
covered by a roof of vaulted brick-work.
Between the buttresses that support the
roof are narrow niches which serve as
shops and -booths, and these again open
at the back into great court-yards or
"caravansaries," where the goods are
stored on their arrival, and where the
weary camels and pack animals of the
caravan road are stabled after their long
journey. Few of the largest of these
shops are more than twenty feet square,
and the merchant, sitting on a narrow
ledge or counter before his booth, is
within easy reach of every article in his
stock ; yet the amount of business trans-
acted in this primitive way is often con-
PERSIA: THE AWAKENING EAST
36?
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368 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
PERSIA: THE AWAKENING EAST
369
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
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PERSIA: THE AWAKENING EAST
373
siderable and many of the bazaar mer-
chants are rich men, judged even by the
.standard of New York and London'.
There are still a few good curios to be
picked up in the bazaars; but a majority
<>f the articles exposed for sale are man-
ufactured in Europe, while most of the
native rugs and carpets show the regret-
table influence of Etiropjan patterns and
aniline dyes. It is unfortunately true
that throughout the East today the
machine-made products of the "unbe-
liever are everywhere crowding out the
fabrics of the old hand worker. Indeed,
many famous Oriental industries are fast
•disappearing, and the native craftsmen
work only for export to the European
market, while their compatriots prefer
the cheaper if less esthetic patterns of
the Occident. Thus the fine cloths once
manufactured in Resht and Kashan have
given way before the products of Man-
chester and Odessa. Even the coarse
canvas-like stuff, the universal dress of
the poorer classes in Persia, which was
once woven during the winter months on
'Crude native looms, now comes in
greater part from the Yankee mills of
Connecticut, while New York and Bir-
mingham are as familiar names today in
the bazaars of Teheran as were once
those of Bokhara and Bagdad.
A whole quarter of the bazaars of
Teheran is given over to the sale of
European goods, usually of the cheapest
and shoddiest description. At one time
most of these shops were supplied with
English wares, but of late years the Rus-
sians have secured for themselves a
lion's share of the general trade of
northern Persia.
DEMANDS I'OR A CONSTITUTION
The strong nationalistic spirit that
marks the new era in Persian affairs is
one of the most interesting features of
the present movement in Persia. It is
not amon<j the frock-coated European
dandies of the court that we must look
for the men who are now taking the
leading part in the new agitation for re-
form. Many of the constitutionalistic
leaders \\ear the Mowing robes and white-
turban of the Mohammedan priesthood.
Krcenily the Liberal Parliament by an
overwhelming majority voted to sup-
press the publication of a Teheran news-
paper which had dared to propose the
substitution of a new civil code modeled
on European lines for the old common
law based on the precepts of the Koran.
One of the chief causes of popular com-
plaint against the leaders of the Court
part\ is their subserviency to foreign in-
fluences and their unpatriotic policy of
importing foreign officials into Persia,
notably in the case of the customs ad-
ministration.
The Mutjehids, or religious law-
givers, at one time started in a body for
the sacred city of Kerbela as a protest
against the fashion in which their advice
and demands were ignored by the Court
party, and had already proceeded for
some distance on their way before the
latter were constrained to relent. In the
meanwhile the Liberal leaders in Tehe-
ran, fearing the vengeance of the troops
in the pay of the government, had taken
refuge in the compound of the British
legation, where, according to treaty
rights, they were safe against arrest or
persecution. It was reported at the time
that no less than 13,000 inhabitants of
Teheran had thus thrown themselves on
the mercy of a foreign government.
Alarmed by this determined though
pacific resistance, and by the sympathetic
attitude of a large part of the population,
the late Shah's advisers at last decided to
yield, and a manifesto was issued in the
name of Muzaffar-ed-Din calling for a
dunia, or popular assembly. The docu-
ment summoning the first Persian Par-
liament was weirded as follow.-:
"The Shah, since his accessi .11 to the
throne, has always had the intention to
introduce real and efficient reforms I'M
all the departments of the state, so a- to
further the well-being of his people. For
this purpose His Maicsty has now de-
rided that a national council shall be
formed at Teheran, composed of repre-
sentatives of the Kajar princes (the
374 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photo and Copyright by Underwocd & Underwood, New York
CROWD OF PERSIAN REVOLUTIONISTS
Who, fearing the vengeance of the royal troops, took refuge in the British Legation in
Teheran in 1906, and insisted on remaining there until the Shah gave them a Parliament
PERSIA: THE AWAKENING EAST
375
~* 2
5
2 o
<
376
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
THE AWAKENING EAST
377
378 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
PERSIA: THE AWAKENING EAST
379
royal tribe), clergy, nobles, merchants,
and tradesmen. Ihese representatives
will be elected by their peers. The na-
tional council shall deliberate on all im-
portant affairs of state, and shall have
the power and right to express its views
with freedom and full confidence in re-
gard to all reforms which may be neces-
sary to the welfare of the country. The
result of the deliberations of the council
shall be submitted through the inter-
mediary of the First Minister of State to
the Shah for His Majesty's signature,
and shall then be carried into effect. The
rules of procedure of the national coun-
cil shall be drawn up with the approval
of the members and shall receive the
Shah's signature. The council, after de-
termining its rules of procedure, shall
then begin to give effect to the sacred
laws of Islam and to introduce the nec-
essary reforms."
Thus was accomplished, by an almost
bloodless revolution, the same laudable
ends that ended in disastrous failure,
after months of rapine and outrage, just
across the border in "civilized" and
"Christian" Russia ! Certainly an en-
couraging and instructive sign of the
march of events in the "awakening
Hast."
The first Persian national convention
was made up of delegates from all over
Persia, but most came from the northern
provinces, where constant contact with
the restless population of the Caucasus
had familiarized the people with the
principles of liberty and popular govern-
ment. While not elected bv popular suf-
frage, this body undoubtedly renresented
the will of the more enlightened and pro-
gressive inhabitants of the country, espe-
ciallv in the great centers of population,
Tabriz, Teheran, and Ispahan.
RI-SULTS OF THE TARUAMKNT
Taking into account the extraordinary
circumstances that made the first na-
tional assembly a possibility, and the
apathy of by far the greater number of
tiie Shah's subjects where their personal
liberties are concerned, the work accom-
plished by the Persian Parliament after
a httie mure than a year of existence is
noteworthy and promising. As in pa>t
years, the financial condition of the king-
dom leaves much to be desired.
The Shah's entourage have succeeded
in shifting to the shoulders of the
people's representatives the constantly
recurring question of how to raise rev-
enue with every natural resource long:
since hypothecated in favor of foreign
creditors. It must be remembered, how-
ever, that Persia's unfortunate financial
situation is largely the result of the fol-
lies and extravagances of a previous
regime, and the present misfortunes that
threaten the credit of the country have
their root in reckless borrowing and im-
providence, lasting over a period of
twenty years or more.
Hopeful signs of internal improve-
ment are noticeable all over Persia, espe-
cially in the northern provinces, where
the towns and villages have taken steps
to form local municipal assemblies mod-
eled on European lines. Attempts are
being made in many provinces to inaug-
urate a fair system of taxation, and the
people are beginning to realize that the
passing of the iniquitous system of tax
"farming" means the beginning of a new
era of prosperity for the poor as well as
the rich.
Among other signs of the awakening
interest of Persian people in the affairs
of their country is the sudden and re-
markable prowth of the Persian pivss.
In place of the old "Monitenr Official."
Teheran can now boast of no less than
four daily and thirty weekly papers.
Most of these are rabidly progressive in
their tone, nor can their influence be said
to be wholly beneficial to the cause they
support. Nevertheless it is a promising
sign that the absolute apathy toward
public affair^ which was a characteristic
trait only a few years a<ro is giving place
to a new sense of social responsibility.
380 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
,
Photo and Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
A MOUNTAINEER OF SOUTH PERSIA, NEAR BUSHIRE, ON THE PERSIAN GULF
PERSIA: THE AWAKENING EAST 381
Photo and Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
AN ARISTOCRATIC YOUNG PERSIAN LADY
382 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
PERSIA: THE AWAKENING EAST
383
- =
o
5 11
•O V
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
OUTLINE MAP OF PERSIA
CONSERVATION OF OUR NATURAL
RESOURCES
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT has in-
vited the President of the National
Geographic Society, Dr Willis L. Moore,
as its representative, to take part in the
conference to be held at the White
Plouse in May for the Conservation of
our Natural Resources.
THE WHITE HOUSE,
WASHINGTON, March; 14, 1908.
MY DEAR SIR : Recently I invited the gover-
nors of the states and territories to meet in
the White House on May 13-15 next in a con-
ference on the Conservation of Natural Re-
sources. In issuing the invitation I expressed
the opinion that there is urgent need of taking
stock of our resources, and I added my belief
that the conference ought to take rank among
the more important meetings in the history of
the country.
The replies to the invitation have been most
gratifying. They indicate that practically all
the governors, each with three special advis-
ers, will attend the conference. The Senators
and Representatives of the Sixtieth Congress,
the Justices of the Supreme Court, and the
members cf the Cabinet have also been invited
to take part ; and the Inland Waterways Com-
mission, which suggested the conference, will
be present to reply to inquiries and make
record Of the proceeding?. A limited number
of leading associations of national scope, con-
cerned with our natural resources, will be in-
vited to send one repre^enta-
tive each to take part in the
discussions. The general pur-
pose of the conference is in-
dicated on pages 24-26 of the
preliminary report of the
Waterways Commission.
I invite the cooperation of
the National Geographic So-
ciety in bringing this matter
before the people ; and it
gives me added pleasure to
invite you as President of the
Society, to take part in the
conference.
Sincerely yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
President WILLIS L. MOORE,
National Geographic Society,
Washington, D. C.
Every student of geog-
raphy keenly appreciates
the importance of the
conference called by the
President, and hopes for
lasting results from the
meeting. The National Geographic So-
ciety for many years through its Maga-
zine has endeavored to stimulate interest
in the great natural' factors and prob-
lems of this country. It is always glad
to cooperate in any movement to con-
serve our animal, vegetable, and mineral
wealth for future generations.
THE NOME GOLD FIELDS
IN Bulletin No. 328, just issued by the
United States Geological Survey,
Mr Alfred H. Brooks, in charge of the
division of Alaskan mineral resources,
describes the rapid industrial changes in
Seward Peninsula, Alaska :
"A decade ago Seward Peninsula was
little more than a barren waste, unpeo-
pled except for a few hundred Eskimos
and a score of white men ; now it is the
scene of intense commercial activity,
supporting a permanent population of
3,000 or 4,000 people, which in sum-
mer is more than doubled. Then the
igloo of the Eskimos and a mission were
the only permanent habitations ; now a
well-built town with all the adjuncts of
civilization looks out on Bering Sea, and
a dozen smaller settlements are scattered
through the peninsula. This region,
THE NOME GOLD FIELDS
385
which then produced only a few furs,
now increases the wealth of the world
annually by nearly $8,000,000. A decade
ago the only communication with the
civilized world was through the annual
visit of the Arctic whaling fleet and the
revenue cutter; now a score of ocean
liners ply between Nome and Puget
Sound during the summer months, and
even in winter a weekly mail service is
maintained by dog teams. Moreover,
military telegraph lines, cables, and wire-
less systems, and a private telephone
system keep all parts of the peninsula in
close touch with the outer world. Rail-
ways connecting some of the inland min-
ing centers with tide-water traverse re-
gions which a few years ago were almost
unknown to white men. This industrial
improvement is the result of the discov-
ery and exploitation of gold deposits."
As there has been but one successful
attempt at auriferous lode mining in this
region, practically all the gold produc-
tion— approximately $37,000,000 in the
nine years from 1898 to 1907 — has been
taken from the placers, and it is the geo-
logic and industrial history of these
placers which is discussed in this report.
Compared with the output of the Cali-
fornia placers, which are estimated to
have yielded in two years (1851 to 1853)
$62,000,000, and of the Klondike placers,
whose output in the first decade is valued
at $118,000,000, the production of the
Seward Peninsula placer mines is small.
A rough outline map in Mr Brooks's re-
port illustrates approximately the rela-
tive size of the gold-bearing areas of the
three regions and his comparison is most
interesting:
"The auriferous gravels of California
* * * probably cover an area about
equal to that occupied by the auriferous
gravels of Seward Peninsula, but the
Klondike gold field is probably less than
one-tenth as large. The California
placers are not only ideally located for
economic exploitation, but their gold
content averaged no less than that of the
Seward Peninsula gravels. Moreover,
the high gravels of California are far
more extensive than those of the Alaska
field. With abundant water supply,
steep stream gradients, heavy gravel de-
posits, accessibility, and salubrious cli-
mate, it is no wonder that the California
placers far outstripped the northern field
in the first years of production.
"The Klondike, on the other hand, is
less favorably situated than Seward Pe-
ninsula, and its water supply available
for mining is much less. It appears,
however, that the placers of such creeks
as Eldorado and Bonanza, in the Klon-
dike, averaged richer than any deposits
of similar extent yet found in the penin-
sula. It was the exploitation of these
almost fabulously rich and relatively
shallow gravels that brought the Klon-
dike gold output up with a bound, and it
is their quick exhaustion that has caused
an almost equally rapid decline of the
annual yield. There are still extensive
bodies of lower-grade gravels to mine in
the Klondike, but these can be developed
only by means of extensive water con-
duits or by dredging. Mining in the
Klondike has passed its zenith, whereas
in Seward Peninsula the maximum
yearly output is still to be reached.
"In the comparison of the Seward Pe-
ninsula placer fields with others, it must
be borne in mind that probably three-
fourths of the entire production has been
drawn from the region adjacent to
Nome and from Ophir Creek and its
tributaries. Therefore, though the gold-
bearing area is large, yet only a few
square miles have been extensively ex-
ploited * * * and it is probable
that it will be some time before the max-
imum yield will be attained."
The report from which the above ex-
tracts are made contains, in addition to
papers by Mr Brooks, papers by Messrs
A. T. Collier, F. L. Hess, and P. !
Smith. It includes several maps and
other illustrations.
GEOGRAPHICAL CONGRESS
THE Geographical Society of Ge-
neva has sent to the National
Geographic Society a limited number of
preliminary programs in French of the
Photo by E. D. Follwell, Korea
"MERRY WIDOW" HATS six FEET IN CIRCUMFERENCE
Worn by the well-to-do young of all classes and by middle-aged women of the higher
class in Korea
Ninth International Geographic Con-
gress, which will be held in Geneva,
Switzerland, July 27 to August 6. Mem-
bers of the National Geographic Society
who are expecting to be in Europe the
coming summer, and who would like to
attend the Congress, will be furnished
with copies of this program upon re-
quest. The delegates of the National
Geographic Society to the Congress are
Rear Admiral Colby M. Chester, U. S.
N. ; Prof. James Howard Gore, of
George Washington University, both of
whom are members of the Board of
Managers ; Prof. Simon Newcomb, and
Dr Anita Newcomb McGee.
NEW TOPOGRAPHIC MAPS.
During January and February, 1908, the
United States Geological Survey issued new
topographic maps as follows : >
State. Quadrangle.
Illinois Breese
Kentucky Morganfield
Minnesota Minnetonka
Ohio Ravenna
Ohio-West Virginia Pomeroy
Pennsylvania Johnstown
Texas El Paso
Virginia Natural Bridge Special
West Virginia Kcnna
Do Keno
Do Otter
Do Walton
With the exception of the Minnetonka
(Minn.), Natural Bridge Special (Va.), and
El Paso (Tex.) sheets, these maps represent
cooperative surveys made by the State and
Federal governments.
Reprints were also issued of the following
sheets, the first editions of which had been ex-
hausted:
State. Quadrangle.
Arizona Kaibab
California Sierraville
District of Columbia Washington
Florida Williston
Illinois Dunlap
Do Ottawa
Maryland Betterton
Mass.-N. H Newburyporti
Missouri MarshaJP^
New Jersey-Delaware Bayside
New York-Connecticut Oyster Bay
North Carolina Statesville
Pennsylvania Millerstown
Tennessee Louden
Do Morristown
Virginia Roanoke
The maps listed above are fcr sale by the
Survey at 5 cents each except the Washington
sheet, which, being double the size of the
others, costs 10 cents.
VOL. XIX, No. 6
WASHINGTON
JUNE, 1908
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH THE
CAMERA"
BY HON. GEORGE SHIRAS, ^RD
Mr Shiras' achievements with the camera and the flashlight have encouraged
many big-game hunters and Held naturalists to adopt these methods of pursuing
or studying wild life. When serving as a member of Congress Mr Shiras devoted
much time to preparing or advocating measures designed to permanently conserve
the birds, animals, and fish of our country. One bill putting under Federal con-
trol the migratory wild fowl and another extending governmental supervision
over fish in the tidal waters, the Great Lakes, and interstate rivers, have received
the hearty approval of the leading game and fish protective associations in the
United States and Canada, while the author's extensive brief in support of such
constitutional power has met with the approbation of many leading jurists and
lawyers. Within the next year active steps will be taken to have these bills
enacted into law. — EDITOR
A BOUT two years ago the writer
L\ contributed an article to the
jL \ NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGA-
ZINE; upon "Photographing Wild Game
vith Camera and Flashlight, "f the pur-
pose of which was to show what an ad-
nirable substitute the camera is for the
un in the skillful pursuit of wild life
and in the capture of trophies much more
mduring and attractive to the hunter, his
riends, or the public, than where the
inimal or bird paid the forfeit of its life
n the game of hide and seek.
The old doctrine of the frontiersman,
rapper, explorer, or remote home-
iteader, that the edibility of certain wild
:reatures justified their destruction, was
md is still a rational one, when we con-
ider how human life has been sustained
* Copyright, 1908, by George Shiras, 3rd.
or the otherwise limited larder of those
in the wilderness bountifully varied by
the moderate taking of game animals
and birds. To a considerably less degree
we may ascribe some reason to the
thrifty market hunter who turns his
ducks into dollars or moose meat into
money, since he seldom kills or abandons
a mountain of flesh for the sake of a pair
of antlers or for the temporary gratifica-
tion of an accurately placed bullet in ah
animal so tough or so remote from civili-
zation that its flesh cannot be utilized.
But how about the modern sportsman
who hunts for the love of sport and the
freedom that comes with a trip into the
wilderness? Are the antlers of an aban-
doned and festering stag to be recog-
nized as a trophy of unsullied honor.
fWith 72 illustrations, July, 1906.
388
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
while the blood-flecked coin of the mar-
ket hunter is to be regarded as the token
of sordidness?
When fagged, overcivilized, not to say
overfed, man seeks the solitude of the
forest, he goes neither in search of food
nor from a barbaric desire to see gaping
wounds and a pitiful death struggle of
some mighty beast. The exhilaration
and the delightful freedom of the wilder-
ness, with an opportunity to pit man's
dexterity and resourcefulness against the
experience, strategy, and inherent cun-
ning of the hunted, accounts in these
later days for many an unnecessary
tragedy in the woods.
A tithe of what one spends in time and
travel will supply the household with
flesh or fowl that is generally superior
to the game sought, or one can buy at
half the cost the skins or horns that later
may adorn the home as a result of the
hunting trip.
Every decent sportsman who now
hunts big game in particular, and many
of those who seek a smaller quarry, are
moved by qualities directly opposed to
needless suffering or useless slaughter ;
and it .is unfortunate that to many of
these the peep-sights of a rifle must con-
tinue to circumscribe their vision. Some
time it will be recognized that, when the
camp is abundantly supplied with wild
food, the camera, and the camera alone,
should be the means of further hunting;
for skill, not kill, is the motive, except in
the predaceous class, like the wolf, the
cougar, or the crow.
THE CAMERA DISPLACING THE SPORTS-
MAN'S GUN
From his accurate knowledge of wild
life and under the prestige and authority
of his high office, President Roosevelt
has done more to permanently conserve
the wild animals and birds of this coun-
try than any man now living. The set-
ting aside, under executive order, of a
great many game refuges and dozens of
islands as breeding places for wild fowl
and sea birds — on the coasts, on the
Great Lakes, and in the distant waters of
Hawaii — has led to remarkable results
and will save many a rare creature now
verging on extinction. Originally an
intrepid pioneer, who only collected a
fair toll in a fair way from the hills and
plains near his western ranch, he has not
in the past 14 years killed a single harm-
less wild animal, confining his brief trips
to a study of the fauna of the Yellow-
stone Park, or to participating in lively
chases after the wolf, the bear, the lynx,
or the cougar, whose destructiveness have
put them in the "predatory" class of
whfch we have heard so much of late.
The President many years ago wrote
the following as an introductory to a book
of wild life illustrated with the camera:
"I desire to express my sense of the
good which comes from such books, and
from the substitution of the camera for
the gun. The older I grow, the less I
care to shoot anything but 'varmints.'
* * * If we can only get the camera
in place of the gun and have sportsman
sunk somewhat in the naturalist and the
lover of wild things, the next generation
will see an immense change for the bet-
ter in the life of our woods and waters."
And this is the man, who for many
years has killed no innocent thing, and
who, sportsman originally as he was, has
become the leader in the preservation of
wild life and in the advocacy of those
means for best studying and enjoying it,
that has been pointed out as one not now
in "sympathy" with present nature fak-
ers or their well-meaning but deluded
followers !
It is only in recent years that the quick
plate, rapid shutter and lens have made
possible successful hunting with the
camera, and even then it has required
time to show the extensive field, the fas-
cinating character of the pastime, and
the sentimental and practical features
involved in this method of studying and
picturing wild life.
Although the writer was an ardent
hunter from early youth, and pursued in
the most relentless way those yarieti<
of birds and animals whose cunning and
whose conquest made them worthy of
the name of "game," it must not be as-
sumed that he, with the usual zeal of ;
convert, now indiscriminately decries
man with the gun; for, under proper
conditions and in moderation the tenan
in the wilderness camp is entitled to his
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA 389
share of nature's bounty; nor is the
writer in accord with the paved-street
nature lovers who would sanctify as
God's creatures the wild deer and the
wild sheep, and yet see no inconsistency
when entering an indignant protest if,
forsooth, a joint of lamb is tough, simply
because the little creature's gambols in
the spring were too prolonged !
In the previous article, already re-
ferred to, the writer used, so far as pos-
sible, illustrations intended to show the
wide scope of camera hunting, ranging
from the gigantic bull moose to the bull-
frog; the graceful deer to the tiny deer
mouse ; the sleeping bird upon the nest to
the rapid flight of wild fowl speeding
seventy-five miles an hour before the
blind. Then, too, it was shown that all
is game to the camera, irrespective of
edibility; that you can still hunt your
game — shoot it on the wing; set your
camera out like traps ; hunt any season of
the year, in daylight or in darkness ; have
admission to lands closed to the man with
the gun, and never be limited by law or
custom in the size of your game-bag.
The fact that the taking of these pic-
tures covered a period of more than
twenty years has led the writer to pre-
pare the present article. Many previous
readers reached the conclusion that wild
game photography was so difficult and
uncertain that while it was possible for
a few persons devoting half a lifetime to
such a pastime to gather together an in-
teresting collection of pictures, yet to the
ordinary sportsman or amateur photog-
rapher the prospects of getting satisfac-
tory results in the vacation periods of
each year were too remote for their con-
sideration.
Therefore the present illustrations are
selected from among two hundred and
fifty photographs taken within the past
year, or, to be more precise, from April
9, 1907, to April i, 1908, and represent
four trips in which the camera was in
use a total of thirty days, aside from the
time of reaching the game fields.
WHERE THE AUTHOR "HUNTED" THE
PAST YEAR
Having had a permanent or base camp
every year since a boy on the south shore
of Lake Superior, much of my big-game
hunting with the rifle or camera has been
in the middle West or central Canada ;.
but in the present instance, with few ex-
ceptions, the photographs represent two-
extremes on the Atlantic coast. One trip,
in April of last year, was to an isolated
coral reef, called Cay Verde, belonging
to the Bahama group and situate about
230 miles south of Nassau, where we lo-
cated the only large, and possibly the
only existing, breeding colonies in east-
ern waters of the man-o'-war birds and
boobies ; another expedition, in July, was
made to New Brunswick after moose
and deer, while later in the season the
Gulf of Saint Lawrence was revisited and
crossed to the Island of Newfoundland
to picture the fall migration of the cari-
bou; and the fourth and final trip was
made this spring, to Florida waters, for
a further study of the brown pelicans,
and other local birds. As will be noted,
no distinction was made between game
and non-game animals and birds in these
recent expeditions.
AN EXCITING VOYAGE IN WEST INDIA
WATERS
In company with Mr Frank M. Chap-
man, the well-known ornithologist, the
voyage to Cay Verde was made from
Miami in the trim little schooner yacht
Physalia, of the Carnegie Institution of
Washington, and under the command of
that experienced navigator and naturalist
Dr. A. G. Mayer, director of the Dry
Tortugas Laboratory. At first sight the
Physalia seemed small and low in the
water for a thousand-mile trip in the Ba-
hamas. It was fifty-five feet over all,
with a graceful and extended overhang
in the bow and stern that reduced the
keel measurement to only twenty-five
feet. The draft was five feet and the
main deck about three feet above the
water line. The masts, however, were
long and very massive ; but, alas, several
days later these selfsame masts became
an additional source of danger, as the
little yacht, lying on her beam's ends in
a fearful gale, was endeavoring to re-
cover her equilibrium. In addition to the
sails, there was a twenty horse-pnwer
gasoline engine for use in making diffi-
39°
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
cult harbor entrances or fighting against
the treacherous tides of the Bahama
Banks.
The voyage across the Gulf Stream to
Nassau and the first day's run south from
that port was interesting but uneventful.
On the second day, April i, 1907, con-
ditions changed, when a heavy head wind
was encountered from the south, dis-
placing the customary easterly trade
winds. For hours the yacht tacked back
and forth in a futile contest with wind
and waves, for going to windward was
not the Physalia's strong point. At 4 p. m.
the anchor was dropped on the north
side of a narrow reef lying east and west,
which promised fair shelter for the ap-
proaching night ; but at this very moment
the destructive hurricane of April I had
just struck Nassau, fifty miles to the
north, and was tearing its way against
the southern gale, which we were con-
tentedly watching as it sent the spray
high over the reef in front of us.
The barometer, however, had begun to
fall and, not liking the looks of the
weather, with ominous thunder clouds
gathering, another anchor was dropped
overboard, only to find ourselves strug-
gling at the windlass half an hour later
to pull them back again, as the hurricane
came from the north while the tumul-
tuous waves threatened to pull the bow
under, held as it was with double chains,
or later drive us back upon the reef when
anchor free.
As the second anchor came aboard, the
yacht responded quickly to the wind, and
in passing out struck a sunken bar of
sand or silt, hanging just long enough for
a huge wave to sweep the decks and flood
the engine-room, stopping the motor,
upon which we were relying until a small
sail could be reefed. The next wave
carried us clear, and in a few minutes
the engine was again running, and then
began a struggle to clear som^ long, low
islands ahead which could be v imly seen
in the gathering darkness. This required
us to run at right angles to the gale, in
the trough of the sea, and then it was that
the huge masts laid us over again and
again, tearing the life-boats from the
davits and upsetting things generally.
Darkness now came on, accentuated by
flashes of lightning, and after a run of
half an hour it was hoped we had
cleared the islands to the left; so, to the
partial relief of all, the rapidly founder-
ing yacht was turned free with the wind,
and then commenced an all-night's run
through a network of coral reefs and
shallow bars which for six hundred miles
formed the easterly fringe of the Ba-
hama Banks. The night being impen-
etrable, no lookout was placed at the bow,
but every minute or two the lead was
thrown, and when occasionally the Swede
mate called out "Vun f addom," we knew
that but a single foot of water lay be-
tween the keel and some jagged reef.
But here I shall omit the suspense of the
next four hours.
At midnight the gasoline tank broke
and the little cabin was flooded with gal-
lons of volatile oil. With a rush all the
lamps were extinguished, including the
binnacle light, illuminating the deck com-
pass, and just in time to prevent sudden
annihilation. The possession of a little
electric pocket-lamp made it possible to
see the wheelman's compass until, after
an hour's effort, with a barricade of
canned goods carried from the hold to
the deck, we succeeded, in the howling
gale, in lighting a marine lantern.
At 4 130 a. m., in the first gleam of the
coming light, the pilot made out a high
and rocky island a quarter of a mile to
the east, and in a few minutes he skill-
fully guided us into a narrow entrance of
Upper Gold Ring Key, ninety-one miles
away from the anchorage of the night
before. Here, in a spirit of thankfulness,
we remained for two days, until the gale
passed away, repairing the broken life-
boats and pumping out the gasoline from
the bilge, during which time we cooked
our meals on the shore of the key, for
the yacht was still filled with the sicken-
ing and dangerous fumes of gasoline.
And how bright and lovely those scarred
rocks and tangled thickets seemed ! On
board everything was thoroughly
drenched except our precious plates,
which fortunately had been put up in
water-tight tin cans.
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA
39
WRECKERS EYEING THE PHYSAUA WITH INTEREST
It may be remarked that this was the
first hurricane at such an early date for
nearly twenty years, and, with a wind
pressure of more than eighty miles an
hour, it beached, sunk, or dismantled a
large number of vessels at Nassau and in
our vicinity.
But let no inexperienced one suppose
that this unusual adventure of the P/i\-
salia is typical of life on the sea, or that
he who seeks the remote forests or the
open waters is leading a life of danger
and of hardship, for the dangers of the
crowded city far exceed in number and
variety those of the former. "The perils
THE PHYSALIA OX A RI-KF (SKK I'At'.K 402)
CURLY TAILED LIZARD, CAY VERDE
RESTING AFTER THE HURRICANE ON UPPER GOLD RING KEY: AN ABANDONED
NEGRO HUT
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA
393
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ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAM
ERA
395
396
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
f
PARENT BOOBIES COVERING YOUNG FROM DIRECT SUN HEAT OF 130 DEGREES
NESTING BOOBY : WITH YOUNG DISPLACED IN FOREGROUND
•
OXLY YOUNG TWIN BOOBIES NOTICED IN JOO NKSTS
THE PARENT BOOBIES STAND GUARD ON EITHER SIDE NIGHT AND DAY, EXCEPT \V II EN-
SEARCH ING FOR FOOD
398 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
BOOBIES IN FLIGHT : NOTE FAN-TAILS
YOUNG BOOBY IN FINAL GRAY PLUMAGE JUST BEFORE} CHANGING TO ADULT
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA 399
MAN-O -WAR BIRDS SOARING IOO YARDS OVERHEAD ON MOTIONLESS WINGS
of the deep" is a most misleading phrase.
It is the peril of the shallows, of the
reefs, of the fog-bedimmed coast, that
makes navigation sometimes dangerous
and uncertain. Not too much wind, how-
ever great, but too little water, is the
cause of nearly every disaster upon the
sea.
The loss of all the gasoline except a
few gallons remaining in the bottom of
the ruptured tank delayed the expedition
many days, and instead of a return to
Nassau within a week, nearly a month
elapsed before the trip was over.
The following week, a hundred miles
farther south, we spent several days at
Ragged Island awaiting favorable con-
ditions for visiting Cay Verde, more than
thirty miles out of sight of land to the
east and upon which a landing could only
be made when a light wind prevailed, for
calm days were now unavailable, with
the gasoline practically gone, and heavy
winds meant insurmountable breakers
rolling in upon the small sand beach at
Cay Verde.
Finally, on April 8, with a light head
wind, the Physalia slowly tacked its way
toward our goal, and late in the after-
noon, when within three miles of this
little island, the wind died out and it be-
came necessary to use several gallons of
the remaining gasoline in order to make
a landing before dark ; and a fortunate
move it was, for the next day a heavy
wind prevailed and would have prevented
landing upon or departure from the reef.
But miles away and long before the
boats were launched and loaded we had
been anxiously eying the reef for signs
4-OO THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
BREEDING COLONY OF MAN-o'-WAR BIRDS
Old black bird on nest and young white birds scattered through thicket. The nests are built
on sea-grape bushes surrounded by impenetrable cactus
of bird life. Our data was not at all en-
couraging, since such as we had only
established the existence of bird colonies
in 1857 and 1896. Whether the birds
had been there this season or, if so, had
been broken up by the rather unusual
visit from some becalmed ship, we did
not know.
Schooners carrying fifteen or twenty
dories and a crew of twenty or more ne-
groes are continuously searching the
shallow waters of the Bahamas for
sponges, and, as might be expected, have
from time immemorial made a practice
of landing upon islands for birds' eggs
and their young and, when possible, tak-
ing the breeding birds themselves, with
the result that in recent years bird life in
the Bahamas is threatened with extinc-
tion. Some of the readers may recall Mr
Chapman's efforts, covering three sea-
sons, to locate on these islands a breeding
colony of the beautiful pink flamingo,
and how at last he succeeded, after dis-
covering a breeding site many miles in
the interior, on a large marshy island and
so remote as to have escaped the vigilant
eyes of the watchful natives.
The extreme isolation of Cay Verde
and the absence of protecting land in the
neighborhood make the landing too un-
certain to warrant a trip that far in
search of eggs or young.
However, as the yacht approached a
little nearer we noticed high over the
island the graceful, soaring flight of sev-
eral man-o'-war birds, and later could
see, coming from all directions, small
numbers of boobies, bringing in their
pouch the evening meal for their clam-
orous offspring, provided they were not
intercepted in mid-air and compelled to
disgorge for the benefit of that hawk of
the sea, the man-o'-war bird, whose diet
consists wholly of flying fish or the toll
collected from the good-natured boobies,
the presence of which alone makes pos-
sible a certain supply of fish for the
young of its piratical neighbor.
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA
40 i
YOUNG MAN-O -WAR BIRD AT CLOSE RANGE
The man-o'-war or frigate bird belongs to the inter-tropical seas. They have a greater
expansion of wing in proportion to the weight of the body than any other bird, and in power
of flight are unsurpassed, soaring for hours at a great height, often far out at sea. They
live on flying fish or by robbing the boobies, gulls, and terns. The long, narrow, powerful
bill has at the end a horny hook, in appearance and substance like a talon, while the feet,
from lack of use, are small and atrophied. The male is a brilliant black and has a con-
cealed pouch of red skin which, when inflated, resembles a toy balloon; the female is brown-
ish black with a splotched breast of white. The single young is white with black wings,
and always stands erect in the nest.
402 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Just as the tropical sun was sinking,
the Physalia crossed the crimson sheen
and dropped anchor off the pretty little
sand beach mortised in between black
and jagged battlements of seolian rock,
which in broken masses circled the rest
of the island. Quickly a large cask of
water and a box of provisions were sent
ashore for use, in case we were marooned
by the forced withdrawal of the yacht
under stress of weather, and later disem-
barking with our cameras, we landed for
a three days' visit. A shelter for the
night was made from an old sail sup-
ported by our tripods, and then Dr
Mayer returned to the rolling vessel with
a calm and satisfied demeanor, while we
secretly rejoiced at having solid ground
beneath our blankets, hard as it was.
In the fading light Mr Chapman and I
stood by the little tent, gazing with curi-
osity and pleasure upon" thousands of
dark-colored boobies, who in stolid
silence stood upright on either side of
their single white-plumaged young, many
of them not ten feet away from the edge
of the tent, while still farther away we
could see the circling man-o'-war birds
descending for the night to nests scat-
tered throughout a low thicket, composed
of sea-grape bushes and spiny cactus. At
sunrise we were up, and before attempt-
ing breakfast made a hasty trip to the
higher part of the island and with field-
glasses carefully studied the birds, map-
ping out our plan of action.
Our investigation then and later
showed the island to be about thirty acres
in extent and containing more than 4,000
ground-nesting boobies and five or six
hundred man-o'-war birds in the sea-
grape thicket, each colony in the midst
of its nesting season. The pictures and
subjoined text will tell without further
words just what the camera saw, though
the remarkable fact may be stated that
while the booby nests usually contained
two eggs, we were unable to find more
than one pair of young in any of the
hundreds of nests examined — clue, as
we discovered, to the peculiar fact that
there was a difference of at least ten days
in the incubating eggs, and that therefore
the first young hatched would alone sur-
vive. The man-o'-war birds, on the other
hand, lay one egg and, unlike the boobiesr
the nests are placed far back in the almost
impenetrable jungle of cactus.
Several times the Physalia changed its-
anchorage, as heavy winds came on and
on one night in particular we were much
alarmed when in the midst of a violent
thunder-storm the lights upon the Phy-
salia disappeared, occasioned, as we dis-
covered on the next day, by the violent
rocking of the vessel. At the end of the
third day our work was done, including
the taking and preparation by Mr Chap-
man of a splendid group of both variety
of birds for the American Museum of
Natural History; and then began the
slow journey back to Nassau. Delays
were numerous, but none were serious
until the night of April 16, when for the
only time, aside from the night of the
hurricane, we attempted a several hours'
run with a fair wind and a full moon, in
order to reach Nassau next day if pos-
sible, where and when the last steamer of
the season left for Miami. At n p. m.
the yacht suddenly stopped, the masts
shook violently, the sails flapped, and be-
hold— we were upon a reef, at high tide,
a mile out of our course, through the
treacherous currents of these broken
waters.
At daybreak, when the tide was low,
we found ourselves perched on a sand
bar in six inches of water, with a deep
channel on either side. The wind re-
mained light and with a large island a
mile to the east the boat alone was in
danger should the wind increase. Here
we remained three days, working like
beavers at the windlass in an effort to
drag the yacht into deep water, but not
until the boat was stripped of all her bal-
last, provisions, anchors, etc., did we suc-
ceed in getting her off, in high water, at
midnight of the third day ; and, as an ex-
ample of our former good luck, it may be
stated that the bar we struck lay just ten
miles south of where we began the all-
night run on the night of April ist. The
next day we reached Nassau, too late, of
course, for the Miami boat, and were
compelled to return by water to New
York on a Ward line steamer.
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA 403
MALE AND FEMALE MAN-oVAR BIRDS FLYING OVER SEA GRAPE THICKET: NOTE
WING ACTION AND FORKED TAILS
FIVE NESTS OF MAN-O'WAR BIRDS IN A RADIUS OF six FEET: THIS BIRD HAS BUT
ONE YOUNG
404 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA
405
406 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
AFTER MOOSE AND DEER IN NEW
BRUNSWICK
During the first week in July, 1907,
I spent a pleasant week in New Bruns-
wick hunting moose and deer with the
camera and flashlight. Although I had
traveled through this famous game coun-
try a number of times en route to New-
foundland, previous plans had prevented
a visit into its wilds.
In company with Adam Moore, the
famous guide, trapper, and woods phi-
losopher, we ascended the Tobique River
seventy miles to its head-waters, Nictau
Lake. Heavy and almost continuous
rains the previous month had kept the
banks full, or, as Moore expressed it, at a
"logging stage" — a most unusual condi-
tion for a mid-summer month. The Up-
per Tobique is peculiar in that it has no
rapids, no falls, and no slack waters, ex-
cepting an occasional salmon pool, for
some sixty miles ; yet it is one of the
swiftest streams I have ever attempted to
paddle. I say attempted, for the grand
rush of this stream, supplemented by un-
usually high water, made the bow paddle
useless, and all our motor power was con-
centrated in a ten-foot pole shod with
steel, which Moore, a giant in stature and
avoirdupois, standing aloft in the stern
of the canoe, wielded with an expertness
and strength that slowly but surely over-
came a current against which four pad-
dlers would have succumbed. Aside from
a sudden dash from one bank to the other
in order to escape water at times too deep
for the shoving pole, no paddles were
used in the three days taken to ascend
the stream.
Did space permit, much might be writ-
ten on the beautiful scenery, the moose
and the deer crossing ahead of us, but
beyond the camera range, on the slow
contest with the current, or the attrac-
tiveness of the camp each night with the
appetizing trout that lived to enjoy life
until the blazing campfire was the signal
for casting the artificial fly across this
spring-fed stream.
Two days later, as we entered the nar-
row connecting creek between Lower and
Upper Nictau Lake, Moore, scanning the
stream carefully, remarked, "there were
plenty of moose in the water today."
Although I had hunted moose for many
years, I neither observed any disturbance
in the muddy bottom nor any tracks upon
the bank, having failed to observe that
floating here and there upon the current
were numerous gray-brown hairs shed
by the moose as they fed on the aquatic
plants in the adjoining lake. A few
minutes later we reached Moore's cabin,
situated in a secluded corner, at the lower
end, ^ where a view of the entire lake was
possible. And here, on the well-cleared
bank, with a more or less continuous
smudge, we were able to fight the sand
fly, black fly, and mosquitoes, and yet be
in a position to enter the canoe in a mo-
ment should a moose appear.
The next day was dark, warm, and
wet, while it fairly rained moose; and
their utter disregard of dampness was
noticeable from the fact of their wading
out in the deeper portions of the lake,
where they would go entirely out of
sight after the roots of acquatic plants.
But the moose is so dark in color and its
movements so rapid when chased by a
canoe that I refrained from attempting
to picture them under such unfavorable
conditions.
The following days were more propi-
tious, though showers fell occasionally.
Many times during the day we silently
paddled along the dark-fringed shores
until close enough to a feeding animal to
overtake it by rapid paddling after we
had been finally discovered. Like all the
deer family excepting the antelope, the
moose has a poor and undiscriminating
eye, depending upon its keen nose and
sense of hearing for protection, and
therefore when the head was freqi ently
submerged it was not hard to approach
with a canoe. During the next five days
a dozen or more pictures were taken by
this means, several of which are shown
in the present article.
But when I returned each afternoon
to camp it was only to prepare for a
much more exciting camera hunt after
darkness shrouded this little lake. At
about Q p. m. smaller lenses were substi-
tuted for the large ones used in davli^ht
work, and, entering the canoe with the
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA
407
jacklight in the bow and the flashlight
apparatus in easy reach, we paddled
along the dark and silent waters, while
the canoe with its single blazing eye, was
seeking out some nocturnal denizen along
the shore or out in the deeper waters of
the many bays.
Until the first night under the jack-
light, Adam Moore simply thought cam-
era hunting an interesting but not un-
usual pastime, for he had studied these
animals for many years in the waters and
in the forests of his native place. But
when, on the first night out, his keen ears
•detected the wallowing of a moose at the
edge of a small bog and later saw its
"bright, translucent eyes and its massive
"body, illuminated by the funnel of light
from the jack, he grew intensely inter-
ested ; and when the flash was fired and
the great beast struggled about, blinded
"but not really alarmed, by what was
taken to be a flash of lightning, Moore
laughed long and loud. Every night
thereafter he was the first in the canoe
and impatient for the start. Here again
the pictures must largely tell their story,
for space forbids a detailed account of
the many exciting scenes during the day-
light and night bombardment of the New
Brunswick moose.
When I parted from Moore on the
Lower Tobique, the following week, he
said : "In my varied experience and with
many scenes before me, I can only say in
all sincerity that the hunt of the past
week has proved more interesting, more
exciting, and of more real value in the
study of animal life than all that has
gone before." And this from a man who
has looked over a rifle barrel for more
than forty years !
'THE REPUTED BELLIGERENCY OF THE BULL
MOOSE
A prevailing impression shared in,
alike by expert and novice, is the be-
lief that the moose — especially the bull —
will deliberately charge the jacklight of
the night hunter, and in many portions of
Canada and the United States I have
l^een urgently advised against trying to
lake flashlight pictures of this animal
from a canoe at night. I recall with
marked distinctness an incident of many
years ago when a hunting chum of mine
came back from northern Minnesota,
where with one of our oldest guides in
charge of the canoe he had fired at a big
bull moose from under the jacklight, and
how, with the jack overboard, and a big
hole in the bottom of a canoe, they spent
the rest of the night on the banks of the
muddy marsh, vowing never to fool with
a moose again under such circumstances.
But long before going to New Bruns-
wick I had discovered that much was
fallacious in this theory, though some-
what mystified by some of my exper-
iences. It so happened when 'the first
moose was flashed (a disreputable look-
ing old cow) it left the bank, bore down
on the canoe, knocking both cameras
overboard by striking the projecting
table, and passed out in the darkness of
the lake to be seen no more. And then
the guide, who for many years had skill-
fully wielded the stern paddle in many of
my flashlight expeditions, and who had
absorbed the many tales of the noctur-
nal savagery of the moose, remarked, as
he looked over his shoulder nervously,
"If an old cow like that can act so, then
there will be something doing when we
meet a bull," or words to that effect.
And I speculated too, as the cameras
were picked up, sustained in the water by
the air-tight bellows ; and then the damp-
ened negatives were hurried back to
camp for immediate development.
\Yhat would happen we learned the
following year in the Wahnapitae Lake
district of Canada, when one night as
we searched for moose in a long, narrow
slough, a big animal was heard feeding in
the water at the edge of the marsh where
1)oiid lilies irrcw in profusion. A.S the
light slowly disclosed the half submerged
body, we saw a big bull moose facing us,
his "jaws working energetically as lie
crushed the roots of a lily. drained from
the bottom of the pond, lie looked
rather fierce and the convulsive move-
ment of the jaws heightened the effect.
It was only after repeated signals from
me that the canoe came cautiously within
408 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
A CONTRAST: OLD BEDRAGGLED COW MOOSE INDIFFERENT TO APPROACHING CANOE
MAGNIFICENT BULL MOOSE IN ACTION: XICTAU LAKE
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA
409
LARGE COW MOOSE DETECTING SCENT FROM CAMERA
NEW BRUNSWICK
BLIND: RED BROOK CREI-K
BULL MOOSE STRUGGLING ASHORE
4io
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
P>ULL MOOSE TAKEN IN JULY, IQO/, AND AGAIN BY FLASHLIGHT THREE NIGHTS 3
LATER
The fact that the same animal was photographed was not discovered until the development of
the plates. Standing in 7 feet of water.
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA
41 i
" : *- /.«»/-•-
RE """
>'J
AN EARLY FOGGY MORNING ON NICTAU LAKK, 6 A. M.: co\v MOOSE FEEDING
BUCK WHITE-TAILED DEER AT NEW BRUNSWICK TROUT STRKAM
4I2
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA 413
414 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
DAYUGHT: COW MOOSE PHOTOGRAPHED AT EIGHT FEET FROM BLIND
Drinking quarts of saline-sulphur water at a New Brunswick natural lick; dark afternoon;
one-second exposure
the twenty-five feet, at which the cameras
were focused.
Then a great flash, a heavy boom and
all was silent for a moment as the smoke
of the magnesium powder drifted away.
By this time both paddles were in the
water, and we were preparing for the
worst. Yet there he stood, his jaws —
now silent — the picture of what — anger
or fear?
Before the question could be answered,
down went the great head with a splash
beneath the muddy surface. Was he
going to turn himself into a submarine
boat and spike us from below? No; he
was simply engaged in pulling up another
succulent lily root for his supper, satis-
fied that the little jacklight, behind which
nothing could be seen, was but a trifling,
insignificant thing, while the bright flash
and the boom was a rather weak sort of a
thunder storm.
Reloading the flash, reversing the
plate holder, and waiting until the head
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA
4»5
for the third time came to the surface,
I fired a second flash, and then in a fit of
carelessness talked too loudly, where-
upon, with a rush the big animal pulled
himself upon the bank, and was swal-
lowed in the darkness of the summer
night.
Year after year I had similar exper-
iences, always to find that it was an ex-
ception not to obtain at least two photo-
graphs of the same moose at night; a
thing that had never happened with the
white-tail deer in nearly twenty years.
But in New Brunswick the real expla-
nation came for this supposed belliger-
ency of the moose at night. One even-
ing, with Adam in the stern, his son in
the middle, and myself behind the light,
we paddled toward a large bull feeding
in the center of the shallow lake (page
410). When thirty feet away, the head
went out of sight, and we could have
passed over the large antlers had we
tried. When the flash went off he
showed no concern, so holding our posi-
tion I prepared and fired a second flash.
But when for the third time I pulled the
trigger the cap alone exploded with a
sharp crack. In a mightly swirl the big
animal, alarmed at the snapping sound
behind the light, swam rapidly away to
the inlet of the lake.
Recapping the flash, we paddled in the
direction he had gone, and soon saw him
facing the light and in about two feet of
water close by the bushes (page 418).
Again the flash was fired but, showing
little concern, he began walking up the
stream, while the paddlers continued to
keep him in sight while I prepared for
the fourth flash, aside from the one that
missed. Just as he entered a broad
pool — famous for trout — and with only
his big antlers partly showing over the
body, I let go the flash, for never before
had I been given a chance to picture the
retreating form of a moose at night.
In the fog of smoke before the jack I
heard a great splash — then another —
while a deluge of cold water drenched
the cameras and myself, and there, stand-
ing within four feet of the jack — the big
head towering seven feet above the
canoe— stood the bull, looking not down
into the light, but beyond as though pre-
paring for another spring.
It certainly seemed time to do some-
thing, so, half rising, I waved my cap
before his astonished eyes and gave a yell
that could have been heard a mile or
more. This was sufficient, for with an
easy lope he entered the bushes upon our
immediate left, and was seen no more.
By this time Moore was howling with de-
light and making some remarks about the
penetrating character of my voice, all of
which I told him might be accounted for
according to the end of the canoe one was
in at the time. By an amusing coinci-
dence this lively bombardment of a sub-
ject of King Edward's occurred on the
night of July 4, and was in keeping with
the pyrotechnic celebrations occurring
the same evening throughout the states.
Yet this adventure explained it all and
made finally clear what I had long sus-
pected. The vivid flash was only seen
by the moose on the bushes ahead, hence
its sudden retreat; the cow that appar-
ently charged our light in Canada, as the
picture shows, was facing away from us ;
the bull that my old hunting companion
shot at was standing, stern foremost, gaz-
ing at the diffused light of the jack on
the bushes beyond, and the sudden rifle
shot sent him away from the apparent
source of danger in front and thus down
upon the canoe. I then remembered that
in five or six instances all the white-tail
deer which had ever thrown water into
the boat when dashing madly by us, in
each and every case, were looking into the
forest at the wavering light of the jack
upon the trees or bushes, so when the ex-
plosion came they instinctively rushed
into the water away from the terrifying
shadows of the forest. On the other
hand, in the hundreds of flashes fired di-
rectly into the faces of deer, moose, elk,
and other wild animals, they never in a
single instance charged forward after the-
flash was fired.
Hence avoid taking a flash or crack
from the rifle at a moose when facing
away from the jack, or otherwise prepare-
for a possible collision, more or less dan-
41 6 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
gerous when the great weight of the ani-
mal is considered, and if you can't
swim, don't try it at all.
Another mistake equally common about
the moose is its dangerous character in
the fall, and in support of this hundreds
of articles have been written, many of
them by honest, well-meaning, sportsmen,
usually of somewhat limited experience,
describing their narrow escape from the
sudden charges of these big animals when
fired upon. The explanation is an easy
one. When the moose is suddenly shot
at from behind by an unseen hunter and
unwounded, the animal almost invariably
takes its back track, thus bringing it fre-
quently face to face with the surprised
hunter, who may or may not then suc-
ceed in shooting it down ; and when a
moose is fatally hurt, or very badly
wounded by the shot from an unobserved
hunter in front of the animal, it generally
rushes madly forward twenty-five yards
or more in the agony of its unexpected
injury, and thus, once more, the animal
is brought down upon the hunter with a
suddenness that is somewhat terrifying to
those who see in its glaring eyes an over-
powering desire for revenge. In either
case the animal has every appearance of
charging the shooter, and hence the tales
of the tenderfoot.
Then again there is a disposition
among some to regard the bull moose as
particularly dangerous in the mating sea-
son, even when not shot at. True, he is
then more indifferent to his safety, but
because in some remote forest his fever-
ish eyes mistake the distant and skulking
figure of a man for a lady-love or rival,
and with a bellow he approaches, it is
easy to understand how some persons
purposely or ignorantly interpret such
impetuosity as a desire on the part of
the animal to give combat to his most
feared and deadly enemy — man — when,
as a matter of fact, just one faint whiff
of the human body will send the biggest
bull into headlong flight, his massive
body quivering with fear.
INCREASE; OF MOOSE IN NEW BRUNSWICK
DUE TO WISE GAME LAWS
The moose of New Brunswick were
extremely scarce prior to 1885, but with
the gradual disappearance of the Indian
trapper and hide hunter and the contin-
uous migration of hundreds of these ani-
mals across the Maine border and the
passage of effective game laws, this
noble animal is now more widely dis-
tributed and is more abundant in New
Brunswick than in any given area of
equal size on the American continent.
No cows or calves can be legally
killed, with the result that thousands of
females now form great breeding herds
capable of more than supplying the pres-
ent destruction of the bull and adding
many more each year to the permanent
breeding stock.
With the restoration of the moose
came the white-tail deer of Maine, and
they likewise are most abundant, saving
many a big moose or caribou that would
otherwise be sacrificed to meet the tem-
porary needs of the pot-hunter or trap-
per. The caribou are also plentiful,
whereas in Maine there are now few or
none.
As an example of practical game pro-
tection, where the producing animals are
carefully protected and the increment
made the basis of a restricted killing, we
find a splendid example of good judg-
ment and concurrent rewards. Shall
we, in this country, continue to ignore
the rules of common sense, improvident
for those of today and regardless of
those to come?
A DIGRESSION ON SAVAGE BEASTS
At this point I cannot avoid a digres-
sion. The almost daily reiterated re-
ports of the "man chasing and devour-
ing" wolf, the "fierce" lynx, the "savage"
bear, the "terrible" cougar, the "revenge-
ful" bull moose excite wonderment; for
in my humble judgment all such blood-
curdling attributes are unfounded and
mendacious in nearly every particular.
However great the perils of the African
jungle, the situation in this country is
entirely different. After a personal ex-
perience of more than thirty-five years in
the American wilderness, from the Gulf
of Mexico to the Hudson Bay waters,
and especially throughout the range of
these particular animals, and after an
almost continuous investigation from
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAM
ERA
FLASHLIGHT: LARGE: BULL MOOSE: UPPER TOBIQUE RIVER, NEW BRUNSWICK
Photographed from a blind at a distance of 15 feet (up. m.) July 9, 1907. The back of the
moose slightly retouched
4i8
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA
420
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
FLASHLIGHT: YOUNG BULL MOOSE) GAZING WITH INTE^RE^ST AT APPROACHING JACK
LIGHT: NICTAU LAKE:, NKW BRUNSWICK, JULY 2,
hundreds of experienced sources, I think
it would be safe to say that there are
more persons injured or killed through
the attacks of domestic animals or wild
animals in confinement, or partial confine-
ment, in a single season than by all the
wild animals of the forest in the past
fifty years.
Tales of savage beasts largely emanate
from two classes, the commercial nature
faker and the novice, in which latter
class may frequently be included land-
lookers, surveyors, miners, the lumber-
jack, and the temporary homesteader,
since many of these are wholly unac-
quainted with wild animal life and very
often possess a vivid imagination, built
up partly upon fear and partly upon a
desire to report startling tales equal to
the best that appear in the local press.
True it is that the grizzly bear, badly
wounded or defending its young, may oc-
casionally show fight, but the old dayr
when this powerful animal voluntarily
stood its ground, is gone forever. At
least in every district where the repeating
rifle has taught the lesson of man's over-
powering mastery, and today not a single
experienced sportsman, naturalist, guide,
or any reliable trapper will relate or un-
derwrite any of these tales of perilous ad-
ventures with the wild and harassed ani-
mals of the American forests. The
pestiferous mosquito and black fly may
sometimes force the bravest hunter or
trapper into a rapid retreat, but no man
need ever hesitate to go voluntarily and
unarmed into any so-called wilderness re-
sorts of this country through a fear of
menacing beasts. And in concluding this-
branch let it be said emphatically that the
more dangerous the supposed traits of
any particular animal, the more the cer-
tainty of its being the one now most fear-
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA
421
FLASHLIGHT : BOAT RIGGED FOR NIGHT-HUNTING WITH CAMERAS, SHOWING FLASH-
LIGHT APPARATUS AND JACK LAMP : TAKEN 1893
ful of man's presence, whatever may be
its attitude towards the other animals of
the forest. To this fact alone does the
predaceous quadruped now owe its exist-
ence, for were it to meet instead of re-
treat from the man with the gun the end
would long ago have been reached.
And let it be said in justification of my
apparent disposition to point out many
prevailing misconceptions regarding wild
animals that originally as a sportsman I
believed in or accepted many of these
popular fallacies. For it must be remem-
bered that with the big-game sportsman
few ever continue to kill moose, elk, cari-
bou, or bear in large numbers or con-
tinue to hunt the same animals year after
year, since usually they seek a few good
trophies and revolt against the further
killing of animals too huge for transpor-
tation or too tough for the platter; and
hence those who hunt the same game sea-
son after season usually confine them-
selves to the smaller varieties of the deer
family or to animals and birds whose
flesh may be utilized.
Therefore most of the errors are due.
in reality, to inexperience with certain
habits of particular animals, however
great the experience of the big-game
hunter in the general field of sport.
The eye of the camera, the light of the
jack, and of the penetrating flash, to-
gether with the same animal under close
observation for hours at a time and year
after year have shown that in a single
422
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
season of camera hunting more accurate
conclusions can be reached concerning
our big game and their ways, in daylight
or in darkness, than will ever occur
through a dozen seasons where the crack
of the rifle almost invariably follows the
close proximity of the wild animal.
AT THE: OLD CAMP ON LAKE} SUPERIOR
While it was the purpose of the writer
to describe in extenso several camera
hunts on the Atlantic coast during the
year, it would seem disloyal to entirely
omit his old camp on White Fish Lake,
in upper Michigan, where, as usual, a
tew weeks were spent last year and
where, as might be expected, the camera
was used from time to time. And at this
point it seems proper to briefly describe
some remarkable changes in the environ-
ment of the white-tail deer on Lake Su-
perior and the dangers resulting there-
from, for it is of this animal, above all
others, that the writer has made a life-
long study.
The deer of upper Michigan have in
recent years greatly changed their habits.
Formerly in the early fall they gradually
migrated south in order to escape the
deep snows of the Lake Superior shores,
averaging more than five feet on the level
in mid-winter ; but the building of several
lines of railway across their old migrat-
ing trails, with the rights of way fre-
quently barred by double barriers of wire
fence, has cut off the retreat to their
former winter range. Owing to the rapid
destruction of timber on the hemlock
ridges and the cedar swamps the winter
quarters of the deer in the Lake Superior
district have, each year, become more and
more restricted, with the result that these
animals seem doomed to quick destruc-
tion through the ravenous attacks of the
cunning timber wolf. Compelled now,
as the deer are, to yard in dozens and
sometimes hundreds — with well-beaten
trails throughout each range and snow
deep and impenetrable on all sides — the
wolf has an easy time in winter, for a
single one may, in a few hours, destroy
dozens of deer under such conditions. It
has been estimated, from the carcasses
found, that over 2,000 deer have been
killed by wolves in the vicinity of White
Fish Lake in the past four years, and
possibly many more.
There is a picture, by flashlight, on
page 426 of one of the few deer seen by
me last season on White Fish Lake,
where to see twenty-five in a single day,
a few years ago, was not unusual.
Therefore it is with pleasure that I
have also depicted on the opposite page
the big gray timber wolf trapped on the
same trail used by this particular deer
and on the A ery next night. A mile away
I heard its mournful howl, when the trap
was sprung, and the next day the camera
shot preceded the rifle bullet which wiped
out its cruel and cunning life. Yet, in
passing the death sentence, a feeling of
momentary pity was felt, since, held in
a cruel vise of steel, the big glowering
animal was in no position to escape or
defend itself. This was the nineteenth
wolf trapped, poisoned, or shot in the
vicinity of my camp the past thirty years,
and in number represent the offspring
of only three female wolves in a single
season. The bounty in Michigan now
varies from $35 to $50 per scalp, and
every effort is being made to wipe out
this the most resourceful, destructive,
and elusive animal on the American conti-
nent. And to the Biological Bureau, at
Washington, must be credited much of
the successful work now being done, both
in the deer forests of the North and upon
the cattle plains of the West.
AFTER THE NEWFOUNDLAND CARIBOU
On a previous occasion I had spent
many pleasant weeks in Newfoundland
fishing, canoeing, and camping on the in-
terior lakes and rivers, but it was not
until the fall of last year that I made a
special trip for caribou, and particularly
for the purpose of picturing their water
migration on several of the larger lakes,
for when migrating they generally prefer
the open waters to traveling across bogs
and timbered land.
With my former guide, William
Squires, we made a canoe trip up Sandy
River to Deer and Sandy lakes — about
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA
423
A 75-POUND TIMBER WOLF1 TRAPPED- ON A DEER RUNWAY NEAR AUTHOR'S CAMP,
LAKE SUPERIOR, JULY 29, 1907
An animal that now threatens with extinction the deer in Lake Superior region and Canada
5OO FOREST MUSHROOMS AT THE BASE OF A HARD MAPLE, LAKE SUPERIOR
424 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
_
A SAPSUCKER MAKING FRESH SAP BASINS IN BARK, WHERE IT ALSO CATCHES
ATTRACTED BY THE SWEET FLUID, JULY 26,
ANOTHER VIEW, SHOWING REGULARITY OF SAP BASINS COVERING SIX WEEKS' USE
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA
MINK TAKING ITS OWN PICTURE} BY FLASHLIGHT BY PULLING OX STRING BAITED-
WITH FISH : WHITE FISH RIVDR, MICHIGAN, JULY, 1907
426
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA 427
O "g
< c
* §
§ I
u ^
< I
< V
428 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
, SANDY RIVER DISTRICT, NEWFOUNDLAND
Where the water migration of the caribou was studied. Note camera in bow of canoe
lialf the distance north of Grand Lake
that we had gone the year before. Our
•camp was located at the outlet of the
lake, which, with the adjoining one,
formed an east-west base line of more
than nine miles across the southerly line
of migration. Here, on the second day,
a fine stag with an antlered doe and fawn
•quickly entered the water, and looking
neither to the right nor the left, began
their long swim across the lake.
In a few minutes the canoe was by
their sides, when, raising their heads
.aloft — previously held close to the wa-
ter— they made a gallant effort to out-
strip us, their stubby white tails held
.aloft like peaceful flags of truce. Yet
why describe what the camera saw each
•day, when here are the scenes them-
selves.
I was surprised to note the small num-
ber of fawns, based upon close personal
•observations and those of several others.
In more than 300 does of which I have a
record last fall there was on an average
"but one fawn to four does — in striking
contrast to the moose and the deer, who,
"besides usually having two young each,
are more or less harassed by the timber
wolf and cougar, while in Newfoundland
man is the sole enemy of the caribou, for
the wolves, once numerous, have about
become extinct.
And this proportion held true under a
great variety of circumstances; for with
single does three were barren out of
every four, and in a group of four there
would be but one fawn or none, and in
one band of sixteen does, crossing the
river in single file, I counted but four
fawns, and in larger herds the young
were equally scarce. While this may be
due to the extremely damp and rigorous
weather in the spring, at the time the
fawns are born, or to the peculiar habit
of single stags in rounding up great herds
of does each fall, the fact seems to be
that the young of each year are away
below the average of those of the other
antlered game in this country.
And if my conclusions are right, it
only points out the great necessity for
proper game laws on this island ; for
once these great herds of caribou are
greatly reduced in numbers the process
of restoration will be extremely slow.
There is another matter that I may
express an opinion upon, though it differs
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA 429
TESTING CAMERA WITH THREAD SET ACROSS CARIBOU TRAIL
DOE AND FAWN THAT TOOK THEIR OWN PICTURES SEVERAL HOURS LATER: NEW-
FOUNDLAND, OCTOBER 2O, 1907
43°
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
DAYLIGHT: WEASEL : NEWFOUNDLAND! ITS NIMBLENESS MAKES IT HARD TO
PHOTOGRAPH
CARIBOU STAG, DOE, AND FAWN I ONE-HALF OF THE DOES CARRY SMALL HORNS.
THE FAWN IS ASSISTED BY THE SUCTION IN SWIMMING
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA 43 r
CARIBOU IN AGONIZED RUSH TO ESCAPE) CANOE
CARIBOU SWIM SLOWLY, BUT GO ASHORE WITH GREAT SPEED
43 2 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
^
n
^ «
en O
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA 433
VERY LARGE CARIBOU STAG, TAKEN IN ROUGH WATER AND ON A DARK DAY
CARIBOU STAG WITH SYMMETRICAL HORNS PHOTOGRAPHED AT EIGHT FEET. NOTE
BEAUTIFUL WHITE COLLAR CARRIED BY STAGS ONLY
434 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
from the statements of Mr Selous and
other well-known sportsmen who have
hunted on this island, viz., the supposedly
great speed of the caribou in swimming.
When undisturbed, a single caribou,
crossing large lakes, swims about three
miles an hour, and a fair-sized herd
swims somewhat slower. When first
sighting the canoe, the animal springs
half out of the water, and then, with
head erect, tries to elude the paddlers,
and for the first one hundred yards its
speed varies between five and six miles
an hour; and then, becoming somewhat
exhausted by the extreme exertion, the
speed slows down to about three and one-
half miles an hour — a gait that one pad-
dler in a loaded canoe has no trouble in
beating. The swimming speed of this
animal is therefore below that of the
moose and the white-tail deer.
I saw no caribou enter the water be-
fore 7 a. m. or later than 5 p. m., the
movement being greatest from 10 to 3.
The animals, as a rule, are not nocturnal,
either when migrating or feeding, though
in the fly season they feed at night, and
late in the fall, under the stress of heavy
snow-storms, sometimes travel night and
day.
It is also noticeable that they gener-
ally move against the wind, depending
almost wholly upon the nose to detect
danger, which from time immemorial al-
ways lay before them, in their long march
from the northern peninsula to the south-
erly coast. As the result of relying so
much upon scent, neither their hearing
nor sense of sight is at all acute, for one
may sit close to the runway and the ani-
mal, if the wind is favorable, will pass
by within a rod.
Since the building of the railroad that
intersects the island, many large herds
of caribou remain permanently either
north or south of the track, and in this
respect resemble the white-tail deer of
northern Michigan before mentioned.
While the island is visited each fall by
numerous non-resident sportsmen in
quest of stags with fine heads, it is diffi-
cult to compute the amount of meat
abandoned each year in the more remote
portions or because the rankness of the
stag often makes its meat unfit for food
at that season of the year. Two years
ago, for instance, I met three young col-
legians from the "States," who several
days before, on barrens east of Grand
Lake, encountered a number of migrating
caribou, and by good judgment and ac-
curate shooting had, in a single day,
picked out and killed nine large caribou
stags — the three apiece allowed by law.
They candidly admitted that, owing to
the toughness of the stags and the dis-
tance from their camp, every ounce,,
aside from the heads, had been aban-
doned, representing a total of more than
3,500 pounds.
Yet these young men had come thou-
sands of miles for caribou hunting and
were in every (other) respect a manly
set of fellows. After seeing some of my
caribou pictures and hearing the inci-
dents connected therewith, they seemed
to realize that big-game hunting with the
camera was an ideal method and one
that they hoped to try hereafter. As
with the caribou stags, so with the bull
moose, the bull elk, and the gigantic
grizzly bear, whose decaying flesh we
have noticed year after year polluting
the air of some beautiful valley, simply
because the antlers or the -hide was all
that could be saved when these great ani-
mals were stricken down in districts too
remote for transportation.
THE BROWN PELICANS OF THE INDIAN
RIVER
For many years I had been familiar
with the pelican colony on Indian River,
Florida. On one occasion, four or five
years ago, I made a trip expressly to
take flashlight pictures of the breeding
birds, but upon firing the first flash the
whole colony took wing, heading for the
boat with its glaring lantern, until we
were fairly overwhelmed, as hundreds
of great birds, with flapping wings and
large bodies, banged into or over the
boat. Crouching down in the bottom,
with the cameras hurled from the bow,
we waited until the avalanche was over,
when my Virginia guide, a stranger to
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA 435
RISING FLIGHT OF PELICANS: a. WINGS SEEN AT DIFFERENT ANGLES, b. WHERE
IT RESEMBLES THE CANADA GOOSE
436 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
these waters, remarked
as he tossed a flapping
bird overboard, "Darn
these pell-mellicans."
Through fear of dis-
turbing the birds fur-
ther in the midst of the
nesting season, we
quietly withdrew with a
single much-prized pic-
ture to our credit.
This spring, in com-
pany with my former
shipmate, Mr Chap-
man, we revisited the
island, he to take cine-
matograph pictures of
this wonderful colony
and some upon the new
colored plates, and I to
c/j get pictures of these
^ birds in flight or with
y the stereoscopic camera.
£ We found on March
^ 10 most of the young
o birds re-ady for flight,
H numbering some 1,500,
£ while scattered about
3 were the remains of
fa fully 800 more of a later
g hatching, killed either
So by the heavy freeze of
the week before or by
reason of a midnight
raid made by local fish-
ermen, who, disregard-
ing the fact that the
pelicans live almost
wholly upon the worth-
less menhaden taken in
the open sea, have
shown in recent years a
great enmity toward
these birds because the
young occasionally, in
their early efforts, catch
a few mullet in the In-
dian River.
The brown pelicans-
are abundant on the
Florida and Gulf coasts,
When going or return-
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA 437
438
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG' WITH CAMERA 439
440 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
YOUNG PELICAN IN "GOOSE-FLESH" PHASE
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA 44.1
PELICANS IX SHADOW OF APPROACHING THUNDERSTORM
442 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA 443
444 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
CATBIRD BATING ORANGE : HALIFAX RIVER, FLORIDA, APRIL I, 1908
BROWN THRASHER APPROACHING ORANGE ( SEE PAGE 446)
ONE SEASON'S GAME-BAG WITH CAMERA 445
WILD GRAY SQUIRRELS EATING ORANGES, HALIFAX RIVER, FLORIDA, APRIL I, 1 908
446
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ing from the fishing grounds they
usually fly in flocks of from four to ten,
in single file, the leader setting the pace
and the rest in slow measured strokes
flop or sail in unison. The adult, in the
breeding season, has a seal-brown head
and neck with a yellowish crown, the
remainder of the body being silver gray ;
the young, when half grown, are a soft,
snow white, changing to a dull gray
brown for the first year.
Late in October and on the same clay
the pelicans of Indian River suddenly
assemble from all directions as though
controlled by instinct or concerted sig-
nals, and a few weeks later are house-
keeping on a small island occupied ex-
clusively by pelicans for at least seventy-
five years.
Recently all the mangrove bushes have
been broken down or destroyed by the
heavy nests, with the result that the peli-
can, from a tree-nesting bird, now occu-
pies the ground, even though many
similar adjoining islands are well
wooded.
The breeding season is very pro-
longed, lasting until nearly June, with
marked evidence of breeding in detach-
ments, due partly to the small area of
the island, the loss of young by high
tides or frosts, and perhaps also to the
fact that many of these birds raise more
than one brood each season.
The young are usually three in num-
ber and therefore, unlike the man-o'-war
birds and the boobies, are sufficiently
abundant to withstand the ordinary per-
secution by man, destruction by disease,
or the elements. The full-grown young
are cannibalistic, swallowing down the
newly hatched with evident relish when-
ever the parent birds of the latter are
away for more than a moment or two.
Under the wise protection of the Na-
tional Audubon Society and through the
foresight of President Roosevelt in set-
ting aside this island as a government
reservation for breeding birds, there
should be little difficulty in preserving
the pelican of Florida from extinction,
where now they may be seen daily along
four hundred miles of coast, partly fill-
ing the gap made by the almost complete
destruction of the egret, the white heron,
the flamingo, and the roseate spoonbill,
the former victims of a woman's fashion.
SMALL GAME IN A FLORIDA ORANGE GROVE
We have now nearly reached the bot-
tom of last season's game-bag, and in it
will be found specimens of bird and ani-
mal life more common to the suburbs or
the less remote portions of our country.
To many of the present readers big-game
hunting is beyond their anticipation, and
therefore the opportunity to picture at
their country homes many local birds
and animals is worth reciting, however
much the writer's inclination lies in seek-
ing game of rarer kind.
After leaving the pelicans of Indian
River a visit was made to relatives on
the Halifax River, one hundred miles
farther north, where a big orange grove
extended back to heavy timber and many
thickets. No rain having fallen for
three months, the birds and forest ani-
mals were alert for any new sources of
water supply. Taking advantage of this,
I sank a small wooden pail level with the
soil, filled it with water, and by it scat-
tered bread crumbs, grain, and oranges
cut in twain, while twenty feet away my
little green canvas tent was erected,
partly sheltered with palmettoes.
In a short while many visitors came,
and as the tent was moved closer each
day, they feared it not. On the third
day I entered the blind for the first time,
using my largest lens (i4~inch focus).
In the total of four hours spent in the
tent on different days, I succeeded in get-
ting photographs of the cardinal (male
and female), mocking-bird, cheewink
(male and female), turtle-dove, sand-
dove, brown thrasher, field sparrows,
quail (male and female), squirrels, rab-
bits, and wood-rats, several of which are
here shown approaching or nibbling at
the oranges, which above all else were
their favorite food and drink. A pair
of quail excited my greatest interest, as
their appearance was totally unexpected,
though I had been hearing their soft
spring notes near by for several days.
And here ends, for the present at least,
the tale of a camera's conquest in the
realms of the woods and the waters.
MAGNETIC SURVEY OF THE PACIFIC
447
PEARY'S POLAR EXPEDITION
THE substantial and exceedingly
generous subscription of $10,000
by Mr Zenas Crane, of Dalton, Massa-
chusetts, to the Peary Polar Expedition
will probably enable Commander Peary
to go north again in July, 1908. The
Roosevelt has been refitted with new
boilers and machinery and stocked with
sufficient provisions for three years' ab-
sence. Provided $15,000 additional is
subscribed, and we are informed by
Commander Peary that he has good
hope of obtaining this amount, the ex-
pedition will leave New York early in
July. Commander Peary will take a
second ship as far as Smith Sound to
carry extra supplies and coal for the
Roosevelt. After embarking his Es-
quimo at Etah, Greenland, he plans to
force the Roosevelt as far north as the
ship attained on his last expedition, and
then to winter on the north coast of
Grant Land, making his polar dash in
the spring of 1909.
If Commander Peary can establish his
winter's base for the coming expedition
as far north as he had it last time, we
have strong reasons for believing that he
will succeed in reaching the Pole on the
next attempt. His last dash across the
ice was unsuccessful largely owing to the
rapid current discovered by him setting
eastward across the northernmost coast.
This current, however, he intends shall
help his advance on the present expedi-
tion, as he will march in a northwesterly
direction instead of aiming straight for
the Pole when he leaves land. The cur-
rent would then carry him toward the
Pole instead of away from it. Readers
of this Magazine are referred to the spe-
cial map of the North Polar regions and
the Arctic number, July, 10,07, which
shows the route planned by Commander
Peary for the present expedition.
It would be most unfortunate if suffi-
cient funds were not forthcoming to en-
able Commander Peary to go north once
more. He is in the prime of life and has
more than twenty years of success-
ful Arctic experience behind him. Mr
Zenas Crane merits the cordial approval
of all Americans who want to see this
great geographical problem solved soon
and by an American.
MAGNETIC SURVEY OF THE
PACIFIC
WITH the return of the yacht Gali-
lee to San Francisco on May
21, after an absence of nearly three years,
a most successful expedition is brought
to a close. This yacht was chartered by
the Department of Research in Terres-
trial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institu-
tion of Washington in order to make a
magnetic survey of the Pacific Ocean,
both in the interest of safe navigation of
these waters and of r r.gnetic science in
general. For a fuller statement of the
objects of the work and of the results of
practical and scientific importance ob-
tained, the reader is referred to the ar-
ticle by the Director of the Department
of Terrestrial Magnetism, Dr L. A.
Bauer, on "The Work in the Pacific
Ocean of the Magnetic Survey Yacht
Galilee," in this Magazine, September,
1907.
For the greater part of her lengthy
cruise the Galilee was commanded by
Mr W. J. Peters, the scientific repre-
sentative of the National Geographic
Society on the Ziegler Polar Expedition.
He has been assisted by the following ob-
servers, assigned to him at various
times : Messrs J. P. Ault, D. C. Sowers,
J. C. Pearson, P. H. Dike. Dr Martyn,
and Dr George Peterson. Captain J. T.
Hayes, a skillful sailing master, had
charge of the navigation of the vessel
throughout the cruises. Dr Bauer in his
various reports accords the highest
praise to Mr Peters and his assistants
for the very satisfactory and expeditious
manner in which the magnetic work was
performed.
The total length of the cruises exe-
cuted in the Pacific Ocean during the
period of not quite three years aggre-
gates 65,000 miles, or equivalent to a
circumnavigation of the globe two and a
half times. The cruises extended from
the Pacific to the Asiatic coast and from
the Aleutian Islands down to New Zea-
448
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
land, almost every prominent port of the
islands in the Pacific Ocean having been
visited.
Though this vessel had no auxiliary
power whatsoever, but had to depend
entirely upon her sails for motive power,
and in spite of the fact that she encoun-
tered at times most terrific storms, only
one accident befell the party. While at
Yokohama the Galilee was blown by a
typhoon during the night of August 24,
1906, against the breakwater, such dam-
age being sustained that the vessel sank
in about fourteen feet of water, the party
and crew being obliged to take refuge in
the lighthouse on the breakwater and
remain there iv' 1 the storm had sub-
sided. The vessel was, however, at once
drydocked and the repairs pushed, so
that ten days after the accident she left
Yokohama for a 6,ooo-mile cruise to San
Diego, California. Not a single life was
lost throughout the entire time.
The Galilee is now to be returned to
her owners, and it is noted with gratifi-
cation that Dr Bauer's plea for a vessel
especially adapted for ocean magnetic
work (see article above referred to) has
met with success. The Carnegie Insti-
tution has undertaken to build a vessel,
in the construction of which very little
iron will enter. The plans are now being
drawn by Mr Henry J. Gielow, naval
architect and engineer, of New York,
and it is expected that this new vessel,
to be called the Carnegie, will be ready
in time to resume the ocean magnetic
work a year from now, this time in the
Atlantic Ocean.
THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN
THE first two volumes of Mr. Ed-
ward S. Curtis' work on the
"North American Indian" have ap-
peared, Volume I describing the Apache
and the Navaho, and Volume II the
Pima, Papago, Mohave, Yuma, Mari-
copa, Walapai, and Apache Mohave. An
advance announcement of this work was
given in the July, 1907, number of this
Magazine. Mr Curtis, it will be remem-
bered, is making an ethnological study
and a photographic record of all Indians
in the United States and Alaska still liv-
ing in a primitive state. His illustrations
are to appear in twenty quarto volumes,
accompanied by twenty portfolios, each
containing forty large photogravures.
The work possesses great historical and
ethnical value, for Mr Curtis describes
and pictures the Indians in their every-
day life, showing their customs, their
games, and ceremonial life in a complete
detail never before attempted. The fore-
word is by President Roosevelt, while
the work is edited by Mr F. W. Hodge.
The Apaches, who at present number
about 6,000, for the most part live in the
White Mountain Reservation of Ari-
zona. Though their number probably
never exceeded 10,000, they were for
many years the scourge of a large region
in Arizona and New Mexico. The name
"Apache" is one of the most notorious
and widely-advertised of Indian names,
but very little was known about the
inner life and customs of the tribe until
Mr Curtis obtained the friendship of
their elders, and was by them initiated
into many of their traditions and cere-
monies. He had the good luck of being
in the Apache country when the new
"messiah craze" was at its height in
1906, and gives an interesting account of
the religious ecstacy of this primitive
folk. At present many of the Apaches
are working for the government on the
great Salt River irrigation project in
Arizona.
The Navahoes, who are also described
in Volume I, next to the Sioux, are the
largest Indian tribe in the United States.
They are self-supporting, and own large
flocks and herds. They have been the
least affected by civilizing influences.
Mr Curtis calls the Navaho "the Amer-
ican Bedouin," and says he asks nothing
of the government except to be unmo-
lested in his pastoral life.
The nine tribes treated in Volume II
reside within the limits of Arizona, but
extend into the Mexican state of Sonora
and into eastern California.
The Yuma and the Mohave, whose
homes are on the banks of the mighty
Colorado, are usually fine specimens
THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN 4-f9
Photo and copyright by Edward S. Curtis
THE APACHE
45 o THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photo and copyright by Edward S. Curtis
CHIEF GARFIELD: j ICARILLA — APACHE
THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN
45'
Photo and copyright by Edward S. Curtis
JICARILLA — APACHE MAIDEN
45
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
physically, being large boned, strongly
built, and clear skinned. Within a short
distance of them, in the high altitudes, live
the Walapai, of the same family. They
are the direct opposite of the river In-
dians— hardy mountain types, physically
and mentally quick of action, for their
rugged mountain home has ever de-
manded of them a hard fight for exist-
ence. Adjoining them, in Cataract can-
yon of the Colorado, are the Havasupai,
also of the Yuman family, whose sur-
roundings are truly unique. Though
they cultivate small patches in their can-
yon home, for subsistence they depend
much upon the chase, and, like the Wal-
apai, are a wiry mountain people. The
Maricopa, another Yuman tribe, who
have long lived in the valley of the Gila,
exhibit the effect of their Colorado river
origin, both in physique and in their
slowness of thought.
The Pima from earliest tradition have
dwelt within the Gila drainage in south-
ern Arizona. From one point of view
they are ideal Indians — industrious, keen
of mind, friendly, to civilization, and
tractable.
These various tribes have been broadly
termed with the Pueblos, the sedentary
Indians of the Southwest. Most of them
came early in direct contact with Span-
ish missionaries, whose ministrations
they received in friendly spirit, yet after
more than two centuries of zealous effort
little has been accomplished toward sub-
stituting the religion of the white man
for that of their fathers. True, many
are professed adherents of the Christian
faith, but only in rare instances has an
Indian really abandoned his own gods.
As a rule the extent of their Christian-
ization has been their willingness to add
another god to their pantheon.
The Pimas and Yumas and their allies
were the builders of those wonderful
monuments of the Southwest which inr
dicate that a great population formerly
lived there, and has since been dispersed.
It is very fortunate that a man like
Mr Curtis is able to make a historical
record of the Indians before they have
been obliterated.
BOOKS RECEIVED
Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter.
By Theodore Roosevelt. New and enlarged
edition. Pp. 420. 6^/4 x gl/2 inches. Illus-
trated. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons.
1908. $3.00.
The California Earthquake of 1906. Edited
by David Starr Jordan. Pp. 360. 9x6 inches.
Illustrated. San Francisco : A. H. Robert-
son. 1907. $3.50.
California and the Californians. By David
Starr Jordan. Pp. 48. 7x5 inches. San
Francisco : A. H. Robertson. 1907. $0.75.
The Alps of the King-Kern Divide. By
David Starr Jordan. Pp. 22. 7 x 4% inches.
San Francisco : A. H. Robertson. 1907.
$0.75.
The Mother of California. By Arthur Wai-
bridge North. With an introduction by Cyrus
C. Adams. Being a historical sketch of the
little-known land of Baja, California, from
the days of Cortez to the present time, de-
picting the ancient missions therein estab-
lished, the mines there found, and the phys-
ical, social, and political aspects of the
country, together with an extensive bibliog-
raphy relative to the same. Pp. 169. 6x9
inches. Illustrated. New York: Paul Elder
& Co. 1908. $2.00.
American Communities and Co-operative
Colonies. By William Alfred Hines. Second
revision. Pp. 608. 5^/2 x 8 inches. Illustrated.
Chicago : Charles H. Kerr & Co. 1908.
The American Constitution. The national
powers, the rights of the states, the liberties
of the people. By Frederick Jesup Stimson.
Pp. 259. 5^4 x 7^4 inches. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons. 1908.
Report of the Coast and Geodetic Survey.
Showing the progress of the work from July
i, 1906, to June 30, 1907. Washington: Gov-
ernment Printing Office. 1907.
Water Resources of Alabama. By Eugene
Allen Smith. Prepared in co-operation with
the United States Geological Survey. 1908.
In Indian Mexico. A narrative of travel and
labor. By David Starr._ Pp. 425. 9^x6^
inches. Illustrated. Chicago : Forbes & Co.
1908. $5.00.
Mexico, with comparisons and conclusions.
By A. A. Graham. Pp. 283. Sl/4 x 7^/4 inches.
Topeka, Kans. : Crane & Co. 1907.
To the Top of the Continent. Discovery, ex-
ploration, and adventure in sub-arctic Alaska.
The first ascent of Mount McKinley, 1903-
1906. By Fred. A. Cook. Pp. 321. 6^x9^
inches. Illustrated. New York : Doubleday,
Page & Co. 1908. $2.50.
Retrieval at Panama. By Lindon W. Bates.
Pp. 554. 6^4 x 9l/2 inches. New York : The
Technical Literature Co. 1907.
THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN
453
Photo and copyright by Edward S. Curtis
NESJAJA HATAU: NAVAHO
454 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photo and copyright by Edward S. Curtis
LUZI: PAPAGO
BOOKS RECEIVED
455
anama. A personal record of forty-six years,
1861-1907. By Tracy Robinson. Pp. 282.
524 x Sy2 inches. Illustrated. New York : The
Star and Herald Co. 1907.
A Satchel Guide to Europe. For the. vacation
tourist in Europe. A compact itinerary of
the British Isles, Belgium, Holland, Germany
and the Rhine, Switzerland, France, Austria,
and Italy. By W. J. Rolfe. Pp. 308. $l/2 x
6^4 inches. Maps. Boston : Houghton, Miff-
lin & Co. 37th edition. 1908. $1.50.
Atlas of European History. By Earle W.
Dow. Pp. 46. Jl/2 x 10% inches. New York :
Henry Holt & Co. 1907.
Over-sea Britain. A descriptive record of the
geography, the historical, ethnological, and
political development and the economic re-
sources of the empire. By E. F. Knight.
Pp. 324. 524 x 8% inches. Maps. New York :
E. P. Button Co. 1907. $2.00.
An Englishwoman in the Philippines. By
Mrs Campbell Dauncy. Pp. 350. 6xQ
inches. Illustrated. New York: E. P. But-
ton & Co. 1906. $3.50.
Highways and Byways in Kent. By Walter
Jerrold. Pp. 447. $*% x 8 inches. Illustrated.
New York : Macmillan & Co. 1907.
London Parks and Gardens. By Hon. Mrs
Evelyn Cecil. Pp. 384. 6l/2 x 10^ inches.
Illustrated. New York : E. P. Button & Co.
1907. $6.00 net.
Seeing England with Uncle John. By Anne
Warner. Pp. 492. 7% x 5% inches. Illus-
trated. New York: The Century Co. 1908.
$1.50.
Notes Upon the Island of Bominica. (British
West Indies.) Containing information for
settlers, investors, tourists, naturalists, and
others. By Symington Grieve. Pp. 126.
7^ x 5 inches. Illustrated. New York :
Macmillan Co. 1906.
Ancient Italy. Historical and geographical
investigations in Central Italy, Magna Grsecia,
Sicily, and Sardinia. By Ettore Pais. Trans-
lated from the Italian by C. Bensmore Cur-
tis. Pp. 441. 6l/4 x gY2 inches. Illustrated.
Chicago : The University Press. 1908. $5.00.
Through Italy with Car and Camera. By
Ban Fellow Platt. Pp. 486. 6l/4 x 9 inches.
Illustrated. New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons. 1908.
Lands of Summer. Sketches in Italy, Sicily,
and Greece. By T. R. Sullivan. Pp. 249.
5/4 x 7% inches. Illustrated. Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1908. $1.50.
Three Weeks in Holland and Belgium. By
John U. Higinbotham. Pp. 275. 5x 7%
inches. Illustrated. Chicago : The Reilly &
Britton Co. 1008.
The Tragedy of Russia in Pacific Asia. By
Frederick McCormick. 2 volumes. Vol. i,
PP- 435 ; vol. 2, pp. 479- 6^ x 9% inches.
Illustrated. New York: Outing Publishing
Co. 1907. $6!oo net.
The Russian Peasant. By Howard P. Ken-
nard. Pp. 302. 7% x 5*4 inches. Illustrated.
Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1908.
Leon, Burgos and Salamanca. A historical
and descriptive account. By Albert F. Cal-
yert. Pp. 151 and 462 illustrations. 7% x Sl/z
inches. New York : John Lane & Co. 1908.
The Soul of Spain. By Havelock Ellis. Pp.
420. 5% x 9 inches. Boston : Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. 1908. $2.00.
In Korea with Marquis Ito. By George
Trumbull Ladd. Pp. 477. 524x8^4 inches.
Part I, A narrative of personal experiences.
Part II, A critical and historical inquiry.
Illustrated. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons. 1908. $2.50.
Benares: The Sacred City. Sketches of
Hindu life and religion. By E. B. Havell.
Pp. 226. 9x6}4 inches. Illustrated. 1905.
Wanderings in Arabia. By Charles M.
Boughty. Being an abridgement of "Travels
in Arabia Beserts." 2 volumes. Vol. I, pp.
309; vol. 2, pp. 292. 9x6 inches. Imported.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1908.
Ice-bound Heights of the Mustagh. An ac-
count of two seasons of pioneer exploration
and high climbing in the Baltistan Himalaya.
By Fanny Bullock Workman and William
Hunter Workman. Illustrated. Pp. 444.
9^2 x 6y2 inches. Imported by Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons. 1908.
White Man's Work in Asia and Africa. A
discussion of the main difficulties of the
color question. By Leonard Alston. Pp.
136- 5/4 *71A inches. New York: Long-
mans, Green & Co. 1907.
In the Land of Mosques and Minarets. By
Francis Miltoun. Pp. 442. 8J4 x 524 inches.
Illustrated. Boston : L. C. Page & Co. 1908.
$3.00.
Today in Palestine. By H. W. Bunning. Pp.
278. $5/s x S1A inches. Illustrated. New
York : James Pott & Co. 1907. $2.50.
From the Niger to the Nile. By Boyd Alex-
ander. 2 volumes. Vol. i, pp. 358; vol. 2,
pp. 420. 7^4 x g1/*, inches. Illustrated. New
York : Longmans, Green & Co, 1907.
Boing Over. * A tour eastward around the
world, January to August, 1906. By F. M.
Huschart. Pp. 318. 5^x7^ inches. Illus-
trated. Cincinnati: The Robert Clarke Co.
1907. $2.00 net.
From West to East. By Sir Hubert Jerning-
ham. Pp. 351. 6x8^4 inches. Illustrated.
New York : E. P. Button. 1007. $4.00.
Climate. Considered especially in relation to
man. By Robert BeCoursey Ward. Pp. 372-
524 x 8>l/2 inches. Illustrated with diagrams.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1908.
$2.00 net.
456
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
The Complete Mountaineer. By George D.
Abraham. Pp. 492. 9x6 inches. New
York: Doubleday, Page & Co. 1908. $4.80.
Race Life of the Aryan Peoples. By Joseph
P. Widney. 2 volumes. Volume I, The Old
World, pp. 347; volume 2, The New World,
PP- 359- 6 x 9^4 inches. New York : Funk
& Wagnalls Co. 1907. $4.00.
The Mongols. By Jeremiah Curtin. Fore-
word by Theodore Roosevelt. Pp. 412. 6*4
x9^4 inches. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
1908. $3.00.
The World's Peoples. A popular account of
their bodily and mental characters, ^beliefs,
traditions, political and social institutions.
By A. H. Keane. Pp. 434. 5^x8 inches.
Illustrated. New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons. 1908.
History of Ancient Civilization. By Charles
Seignobos. Translated and edited by Arthur
Herbert Wilde. With an introduction by
James Alton James. Pp. 373. 5^/4 x 7%
inches. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons.
1906.
Worlds in the Making. The evolution of the
universe. By Svante Arrhenius. Translated
by Dr H. Borns. Pp. 230. S1A x &A inches.
New York : Harper & Brothers. 1908. $1.60.
The Bird Our Brother. By Olive Thome
Miller. Pp. 331. 5x7^ inches. Boston :
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1908. $1.25.
Big Game at Sea. By Charles F. Holder. Pp.
352. 55A x 8^ inches. Illustrated. New
York: The Outing Publishing Co. 1908.
The Solar System. A study of recent obser-
vations. By Charles Lane Poor. Pp. 310.
524x6^ inches. Illustrated. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1908.
Astronomy with the Naked Eye. A new
geography of the heavens. With descriptions
and charts of constellations, stars, and
planets. By Garrett P. Serviss. Pp. 247.
8J4 x 5*4 inches. New York : Harper &
Brothers. 1908. $1.40.
Mine Gases and Explosions. Text-book for
schools and colleges and for general refer-
ence. By J. T. Beard. Pp. 402. 5^x8
inches. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
1908. $3.00.
Maury-Simonds Physical Geography. By
M. F. Maury. Revised and largely rewritten
by Frederic William Simonds. Pp. 347.
8^ x 5% inches. Maps and illustrations.
New York : American Book Company. $1.20.
Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer. By
David Duncan. 2 volumes. Vol. i, pp. 414;
vol. 2, pp. 444. Sy2 x 534 inches. New York :
D. Appleton & Co. 1908. $5.00.
Three Voyages of a Naturalist. Being an ac-
count of many little known islands in three
oceans visited by the "Valhalla," R. Y. S.
By M. J. Nicoll. Pp. 246. 8^x6 inches.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1908.
Fishes. By David Starr Jordan. Pp. 771.
io^4 x 7J/2 inches. Illustrated. New York :
Henry Holt & Co. 1907.
The China or Denny Pheasant in Oregon.
With notes on the native grouse of the Pa-
cific Northwest. By William T. Shaw. Pp.
24. 6l/2 x 9 inches. Illustrated. Philadel-
phia : J. B. Lippincott Co. 1908. $1.50.
Trees in Nature, Myth and Art. By J. Ernest
Phythian. Pp. 302. 5% x 72/4 inches. Illus-
trated. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs &
Co.
Our Trees. How to know them. By Arthur
I. Emerson. With a guide to their recog-
nition at any season of the year, and notes
on their characteristics, distribution, and cul-
ture. By Clarence M. Weed. Pp. 295.
10 x 7^4 inches. Illustrated. Philadelphia :
J. B. Lippincott Co. 1908. $3.00.
Trees and Shrubs. Illustrations of little-
known ligneous plants. Edited by Charles
Sprague Sargent. Vol. 2, Part II. New
York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1908.
Studies in the Family Orchidaceae. Issuing
from the Ames Botanical Laboratory, North
Easton, Massachusetts. Fascicle II. By
Oakes Ames. Pp. 288. 7*4 x 10% inches. Il-
lustrated. New York.: Houghton, Mifflin &
Co. 1908. $3.00 net.
The World's Commercial Products. A de-
scriptive account of the economic plants of
the world and their commercial uses. By
W. G. Freeman, S. E. Chandler, T. A. Henry,
C. E. Jones, and E. H. Wilson. Pp. 391.
11x8^4 inches. Illustrated. New York :
Ginn & Co. $3.50.
Airships, Past and Present. Together with
chapters on the use of balloons in connection
with meteorology, photography, and the car-
rier pigeon. By A. Hildebrandt. Translated
by W. H. Story. Pp. 361. 6^ x 9^ inches.
Illustrated. New York : D. Van Nostrand
Co. 1908.
Log of the "Laura" in Polar Seas. A hunt-
ing cruise from Tromso, Norway, to Spits-
bergen, the polar ice off East Greenland, and
the island of Jan Mayen, in the summer of
1906. By Bettie Fleischmann Holmes. Pp.
137- 7^ xii inches. Illustrated. Chicago:
The University Press. 1907.
Scientific American Reference Book. Com-
piled by Albert A. Hopkins and A. Russell
Bond. Pp. 516. 8x5^ inches. New York:
Munn & Co. 1906.
VOL. XIX, No. 7
WASHINGTON
JULY, 1908
Photo,
THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN
BY J. N. PATTERSON
holographs by Professor Ferdinand Ellerman, of Carnegie Institute Solar Ob-
servatory, Mount Wilson
IN Mount Wilson, the home of the
great Carnegie Institute Solar Ob-
servatory, Los Angeles and vicin-
ity possesses what may be justly termed
the greatest pleasure mountain of any
populous section of the globe.
Towering at an altitude of 6,000 feet
above Pasadena, Los Angeles, and the
many towns and verdant ranches of the
San Gabriel Valley, this remarkable
mountain has gained distinction in the
world of science as the destined home of
the largest lens in existence. But it has
other claims which need no astronomical
art to reveal, and which, while enchant-
ing the eye of the world-traveled tourist,
are of greatest value to the vast area of
homes whose scintillating fairyland of
lights this sentinel of the Sierra Madre
nightly overlooks.
It is doubtful whether as great a vari-
ety of appealing views can be enjoyed
from any other mountain of the world,
but it is the wonderful accessibility of
Mount Wilson to the thousands of beach
and valley homes outspread beneath its
pine-clad summit and the remarkable
climatic and physiographic change pos-
sible within half a day that makes it "the
magic mountain" in the people's fancy.
A change of mind at breakfast and a
change of speed at Sierra Madre from
the Pacific Electric of the city to the
"Burro" Pacific of the trail, arid the resi-
dent of Los Angeles is able to eat lunch-
eon over a mile nearer the heavens ; may
look out upon a sea of clouds, darkening
the city below, and at night may see the
glow of the light by which the ones at
home are reading.
A plunge in the Pacific and snow-
balling and sled-riding before night has
become such a common story with resi-
dents of this favored district as to excite
no comment, and at night they can pick
out the several buildings of the beach re-
sorts over forty miles away by rail, find-
ing it hard to realize that they were there
but a few hours previous.
There is practically no end to the vari-
ety of wild mountain and canyon scenery
offered by the Mount Wilson trip, but
there are four general panoramic views
which arouse the enthusiasm of the vis-
itor, and each of distinctly different
nature.
Looking to the south, a hundred-mile
vista of valley, ocean, and shoreline re-
veals the buildings of Los Angeles and
Pasadena flashing in the sunlight, the
458
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
distant Catalina, San Nicholas, and
Santa Barbara Islands, the mountain
and coast landmarks of San Diego and
the country to the east, where flourish
Pomona and Ontario.
On clear days the line of the breakers
as they play upon the beach has been
discerned by the naked eye, the arrival
of the Catalina boat at San Pedro harbor
noted, and on a few exceptional morn-
ings the buildings on Catalina have been
visible, 60 miles away.
Looking to the north, vast ranges of
rugged mountains in the immensity of
their trembling bareness suggest to the
mind the upheaval of the earth's crea-
tion, and with a skyline of eight to
eleven thousand feet stand between the
eye and the Mojave Desert beyond.
The magnificent watershed of the San
Gabriel River stretching away to the east
is a foreground for the majestic white-
ness of San Antonio ("Old Baldy"),and
farther eastward San Gargonia ("Gray-
back"), San Bernardino, and San Ja-
cinto are prominent landmarks.
Directly back of Mount Wilson to the
north the West Fork of the San Gabriel
River finds its source in the bottom of a
gigantic bowl, the three-thousand-foot
sides of which, under the softening
touches of a waning sun, make a dream-
like picture not soon forgotten, calling
as from another world to the tired-out
worker but a few hours removed from
the turmoil of Los Angeles.
The rush of the tumbling WTest Fork
can be heard on Mount Wilson, and in
summer this back country is a favorite
camping ground for those who wish to
lose themselves from civilization and
burn their bridges behind. The mail,
the telephone, and the telegraph are of
another world ; the use of the razor is
tabooed ; the daily packing and driving
the burro is the only problem of life, and
the business man returns to civilization
in such a happy state of carelessness that
he is passed on the streets unrecognized
by his nearest friends.
Except for patches of woods here and
there and streaks of green in the canyon
bottoms, these gigantic heaps of brown-
ness look as dry as the desert, but there
are ever-flowing springs to be found on
the highest ridges, and trails lead
through the most impossible looking re-
gions.
Covered with sugar pines, bearing
giant cones over a foot long, Barley
Flats and Pine Flats are two of the en-
chanted regions which beckon to the
Mount Wilson Hotel guest, leading him
yet a step farther from civilization. Both
are well watered at an altitude of over
6,000 feet, are covered with wild barley,
and are reached by the roughest sort of
mountain trails.
Gently rolling over the semi-flat coun-
try of this high ridge, the green carpet
and pine grove of Barley Flats are so
entirely different from the steep and
rugged bareness of the surrounding
country that the imagination seems to
lift one into another country, and one
half expects to see the fairy prince of
nursery days ride forth in gorgeous trap-
pings and blowr a blast upon his trumpet.
This picturesque spot really has its ro-
mance in "The Horse Thieves of Barley
Flats." These hardy outlaws of days
gone by are reported to have operated
between the Mexican border and San
Francisco, using this well-watered grove
of pines, commanding an extended view
on all sides of any possible approach, as
one of their feeding stations.
The grain which the stolen horses
didn't eat is supposed to be responsible
for the fine crop of volunteer barley
which is now enjoyed by the hardv little
burros of the Mount Wilson Hotel Com-
pany, for Barley Flats, which is in the
government reserve, is leased as a fall
and winter pasturage when the absence
of the summer colony lessens the need of
trail animals.
The burros are counted daily by tele-
scope from the hotel, and if any do not
answer to roll-call a rider is dispatched
to see whether a' mountain lion is at
large. When the heavy snow comes, the
burros are brought back to civilization,
the rescue expeditions having a tough
time battling with the snow-drifts.
The record fall of eight feet in Jan-
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uary, 1907, caught the hotel people un-
awares, and a dozen of the patient toilers
of the trail perished before the relief ex-
pedition could break its way through.
When a sea of fog is hiding the sun
from the valley beneath and the peaks
around Mount Wilson are revealed as
islands in the midst of a vast ocean, it is
hard to recall the extensive valley and
ocean panorama of a few hours previous,
when the green checker-board squares of
cultivated ranches and the white smoke
of the locomotive colored the broad level
of the landscape. Mount Harvard,
closely joined to Mount Wilson by a sad-
dle and well wooded with spruce on the
near side, lends greatest value to the
cloud scenes, while Mounts Lowe, Mark-
ham, and San Gabriel rear their succes-
sive elevations in one, two, three order
to the west.
Gradually lifting as the day advances,
the level sea of fog will often break into
the fluffy billowyness of shifting clouds
just as the setting sun lends rose-colored
tints of loveliness. Pouring over the
connecting ridges and downward into
the canyons about Wilson's Peak the
fog, in the twinkling of an eye, forms
waterfalls and rapids, and, filling into
the West Fork Valley across the Sierra
Madre range, constructs beautiful rivers.
The night view from Mount Wilson is
doubtless unequaled by any other moun-
tain of the world. The star-lit heavens
upside down is at once suggested to the
amazed tourist, who is overcome by the
unexpectedness of the sparkling area of
electric lights beneath him. Pasadena,
eight miles distant in an air line, spreads
her scintillating splendor almost to the
foot of the mountain, and is connected
by bands of whiteness with Los Angeles
and the nearer beach towns of Venice,
Ocean Park, and Santa Monica. Long
Beach and San Pedro, over thirty miles
away, are plainly revealed, and the loca-
tion of over thirty cities and towns can
be determined by their lights.
Not the least feature of Mount Wilson
as a pleasure mountain for the people of
Los Angeles and vicinity is the eight-
mile trip by trail from the old foothill
town of Sierra Madre to the peak. To
those accustomed to the dryness of the
valley and coast region, and who have
their sole idea of the mountain from the
bare southern face of the range revealed
to the cities below, the wild freshness of
the Little Santa Anita Canyon is a won-
derful surprise.
The grateful, refreshing sound of
tumbling water greets the ear, beautiful
waterfalls appear in the deep canyon
below the trail, the rocky banks are
green with moss and ferns, and the plen-
tiful profusion of pine, spruce, and
mountain oak is a welcome surprise.
Deer have been killed within two hours
of Los Angeles, and the wildcat is fre-
quently seen on the trail.
Whether the stubborn burro or
"Shanks' mare" is depended upon, the
excursion furnishes one of the most com-
plete and quickest changes from the
atmosphere of civilization to be found
near any large city of the world. The
general dryness of southern California
renders the transition all the more no-
ticeable and welcome.
NOTES ON A ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTING
TRIP TO DUTCH NEW GUINEA*
BY THOMAS BAREOUR
Illustrated with photographs by the author.
NEW GUINEA, the last great area
remaining in the tropics which
is still almost completely un-
known, has a peculiar charm for the nat-
uralist. To be sure, its coasts have been,
and are still, frequently visited and set-
tlements exist on parts of the island, but
great stretches of seaboard still remain
unmapped and all but a small part of the
interior is a blank on our charts.
The unfamiliarity of the average
American with the whole East Indian
Island region, and especially hereabouts,
will perhaps be an excuse for giving a
few general facts regarding the island.
Lying as it does between the Equator and
Queensland, Australia, its length is about
1,490 miles and its maximum breadth is
430 miles. Its area is greater than that
of Borneo, being about 300,000 square
miles. Politically it is divided into three
parts.
The lower coasts bordering Torres
Straits form British Papua, as it is now
called. The eastern coast as far .as
140° 47' east longitude, with a considera-
ble hinterland, goes to make up Kaiser
Wilhelms Land, or German New Guinea.
In both of these districts there are a con-
siderable number of white settlements
and mission stations; and mining and
copra farming are carried on. The great
western region of Papua is Dutch and it
is of this region that we are dealing
especially.
The Dutch section attracts the student
of zoology, ethnography, or geology par-
ticularly. The presence of snow moun-
tains, whose slopes have never yet been
trodden by white man's foot, conjures up
in the imagination endless dreams as to
what new forms of life may there await
a discoverer. Several well-equipped ex-
peditions sent out by the Dutch scientific
societies or by the government have
failed to even reach the bases of these
mountains.
Owing to the extremely unhealthy cli-
mate and the character of the natives, the
Hollanders have not attempted to admin-
ister this territory as the English and
Germans do theirs. Other island pos-
sessions, nearer at hand and far more
valuable from every point of view, have
done much to retard the Papuan trade,
and now only a couple of times a year do
subsidized trading vessels visit this coast.
Three Residents, one stationed at Dorey,
one at Fak Fak, and one at Merauke,
each with a small garrison of Javanese
troops, serve to represent the sovereignty
of Holland over this vast region.
It is this very absence of white folk
which gives this land an added inter-
est, for here the native may be seen in
his primitive simplicity. With such a be-
wildering variety of human types among
the Papuan tribes, each speaking its own
language, the ethnologist has a great field,
one which is certainly unexcelled. The
writer has visited the northwest and west
coasts of the island with his wife and two
friends, who volunteered their aid in col-
lecting, and Chinese and Javanese
helpers.
Leaving Soerabaia, in Java, a long and
beautiful sail, with stops at many is-
lands almost as interesting as our goal,
brought us to Ternate, one of the old set-
tlements of the Moluccas. Here the se-
ries of contract stops was about finished,
and, thanks to the kindness of officials
high in the Dutch Indian service and to
the officers of the Koninklijke Paketvaart
Maatschappij, we started on a number of
visits to many villages, lying in bays
abounding in glorious scenery and where
the natives had, in some cases, seen no
white men in several years. Mrs Barbour
was always the greatest source of inter-
* Copyright, by Thomas Barbour, 1908
470
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
PAPUANS AMONG THE LITTLE COLONY OF TRADERS
They are grouped about the Dutch Resident's house and the barracks for the half com-
pany of Javanese soldiers. The man dressed is our interpreter ; he belongs to a different tribe.
Dorey, New Guinea.
est, for, of course, the only white women
who had ever been on this coast before
were the wives of the little band of Dutch
missionaries who have settled near
Dorey, and these women had only been
seen by the Papuans of that immediate
vicinity. To attempt to give a nominal
list of the stations where collecting was
carried on would be as uninteresting as
futile, for the names of many villages do
not even occur on the Dutch Admiralty
charts.
No words, however, can begin to do
justice to the splendid scenery of parts
of the coast. In the Pitt Passage, be-
tween the islands of Salwatty and Ba-
tanta, steep wooded hills rise from the
sea on each side of the ship. A white
coral sand beach and an occasional house
perched on stilts in the water complete
this scene, while over the bow the coast
of Papua shows as a dim, low bank, as if
a forest were growing from the sea.
The vegetation is rank in this alluvial
land, high timber, matted with creeping
vines, covered with masses of orchids and
rising from a bed of ferns being the fea-
ture which one encounters as soon as
shore is reached. We must not forget
the birds, splendid -iorys, parrots of red
and blue and green, white cockatoos, and
gorgeous pigeons greet one's first ramble
ashore.
MAGNIFICENT BUTTERFLIES
It was the writer's good luck on his
first stroll to find a tree flowering high in
air which was being visited by a host of
the splendid bird-winged butterflies,
Ornithoptera poseidon. The feelings of
one who has hitherto only known these
visions in black and green and gold as
they lay pinned in a cabinet were never
better expressed than by Wallace, who
wrote in his Malay Archipelago the fol-
lowing, after he had taken this species
in the Aru Islands : "I had the good for-
tune to capture one of the most magnifi-
DUTCH NEW GUINEA
47
: Mariana
•' orLadrone
* Islands
C a r 0 I i n e I'
D I A fit
O C £ A A/
NEW GUINEA ORPAPUA
Pr.nce
Frederick Henry \a
O IOO ZOO 3OO mi
472 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
PAPUAN WOMEN
The women of Dorey are well dressed, mainly through the efforts of Mr van Hasselt, for
43 years a missionary in Papua. No converts are made, except where a few slaves are pur-
chased and adopted. The only effects are seen in the help which modern medicine has been
to them; though it must be said that none of these races are ever as healthy as before they
submitted to clothing.
DUTCH NEW GUINEA
473
cent insects the world contains, the great
bird-winged butterfly (Ornithoptera po-
seidon). I trembled with excitement as
I saw it coming majestically toward me,
and could hardly believe I had really suc-
ceeded in my stroke till I had taken it out
of the net and was gazing, lost in admira-
tion, at the velvet black and brilliant
green of its wings, seven inches across,
its golden body, and crimson breast." At
Sorong these were flying very high, as
is their wont, but by climbing the tree and
using a small collecting gun and dust
shot, out of a number brought down,
some almost perfect ones were obtained.
Later we got the chrysalides and splendid
examples emerged after about thirty
days.
In coming to Papua from Malasia
it is the sudden contrast in the people
which makes the most startling impres-
sion on one's mind. The Malay, grave,
reserved, and dignified, is as unlike his
New Guinean neighbor as a Chinaman is
unlike a European. These islanders are
a happy, boisterous lot until some little
thing offends them, when they at once
become sullen and treacherous ; but as
we had no occasion to cross them, we got
along most admirably. They often helped
us collect with real enthusiasm, a set of
rude drawings of various beasts showing
them for what we would barter.
Over all Dutch New Guinea tobacco,
or "sembacoo," as the natives call it, is
the most sought for "trade." Next in
popularity comes brass wire, then cloth,
red being demanded in some localities
and blue in others. Beads and knives
are also most useful. The tobacco is put
up for this trade in Rotterdam, marked
"The Rising Hope" (in Dutch), and con-
tained in a blue wrapper; curiously
enough any other sort is absolutely re-
fused by the people. They smoke it and
chew it. They are very fond of walking
up to you and taking a cigar or cigarette
directly from your mouth and walking
away puff it with perfect unconcern.
When going ashore every article of value
(from the Papuan standpoint) must be
left behind. The conception of the differ-
! ence between meum and teum is not defi-
| nite, and to try to keep a thing from a
native by force is — well, a proceeding of
doubtful safety.
/ In the extreme northwest of New
Guinea and on the neighboring island of
Waigiu the people are similar. Here
has taken place the longest intercourse
with the Malays, for until the Dutch
came, the Sultan of Ternate was suzerain
of this part of Papua. There has been a
mingling of blood, as is shown by some
individuals being of a lighter color than
is common, and also by the occasional oc-
currence of wavy instead of curly hair.
The pure Papuan is very dark brown,
usually a well-built, thick-set man of me-
dium height. Occasional individuals are
seen who are slight, short, and who have
strongly marked Negrito characteristics.
These probably represent survivals of the
very earliest human inhabitants of the re-
gion, as were the Negritos in the Philip-
pines. Out on the Pacific coast toward
German territory the human type is
markedly different. Here in varying de-
grees we meet people who have character-
istics of other island groups to the east-
ward, for there have probably been acci-
dental colonizations along this shore by
both Melanesians proper and Polynesi-
ans. To attempt to describe these physi-
cal types would be beyond the writer's
powers and the scope of this paper; the
photographs serve to illustrate this point.
The houses which these people build
are of much interest. They are gener-
ally well made, often with attempts at
artistic decoration, and always most pic-
turesque. In the northwest the Malay
type prevails. We find each family with
its own house. This is placed on poles
out in the water with sides of "attap," or
pandannus mat, and roof of thatch. This
thatch is made by taking sago palm leaves
and braiding the blades all on one side of
the midrib. These are then laid on as
clapboards would be. and make an ex-
cellent water-tight roof.
COMMUNAL HOUSES
In Geelvink Bay, at Dorey, Roon, or on
Jobi Island the regular house is a long
communal structure. These great "tur-
tle-back" houses shelter from 80 to TOO
people. They eat and sleep generally in
474 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
a long corridor, which runs lengthwise
through the building, while on each side
lead off small rooms, in which the private
belongings of each family are stored.
The men lounge regularly on the front
piazza, often lying prone with spear or
bow and arrow ready for any fish which
may happen by. The people show most
wonderful skill in striking or shooting
into water ; they seem to be able to allow
for the refraction to a nicety. The
women work on the back piazza, near-
est the forest-covered shore — convenient
agents to spread the alarm should an at-
tack be made by some marauding land
tribe. The canoes are moored at the
front of the house. Evidently the Pa-
puan warrior looks first to his own
safety.
On Wiak Island the houses were of an-
other sort; similar in shape, they were
set in two different positions. Some were
over the water, as we had often seen be-
fore, while others were set on high bam-
boos among the trees of the deep forest.
These houses were generally three-
roomed, one opening out on each end,
and a third between these having a side
door. We saw little of the people or
their doings. They have a very bad rep-
utation for treachery. The women were
shy, hiding always deep in the bush and
our photos here were very unsatisfactory.
Whenever the women came out to meet
the ship along with the men we felt quite
safe to go ashore and wander at will
through the deep pathless forests ; but
here at Meosboendi only men came out
in the canoes, armed men carrying many
spears, bows, and quivers full of short
bone-tipped arrows. They were drink-
ing heavily of their home-brewed
"sagoeir" and were in a generally bad
frame of mind. A few on shore stood
for their picture, but most would not,
and the women ran off helter skelter and
took refuge in their high houses.
On a previous trip the captain of the
trading steamer was standing on the
beach leaning against a tree, when a
Wiak man walked up and drove his spear
through him. For some years the Dutch
government prohibited trading with these
people as a measure of reprisal, and we
left safe and sound after what was one
of the first trips since the ban had been
removed. At Korido, a village near
Meosboendi, on Sook Island, the peo-
ple on a previous trip had met the
steamer with a shower of spears. No
trading by white people has ever been
done here and we did not attempt a land-
ing. That an occasional Malay trading
prau gets this far was testified by the fact
that many of the Papuan had spear-
heads of iron, shaped as are the spear-
heads of the Buginese Malays about
Makassar.
From Wiak it is a short journey to
Jobi Island, another of the group which
lies in the mouth of Geelvink Bay. The
people here vary little in appearance from
the other Papuans of the region, but
their manners and customs differ much
from village to village. Indeed, while
this island is hardly larger than Long
Island, New York, eleven mutually un-
intelligible languages are spoken on it.
Many feuds exist, and when our ship
came to anchor in Pom Bay, canoes at-
tracted by the smoke and which had
come from neighboring harbors did not
spend the night even close to the ship,
because their occupants were afraid of
the people of Pom.
In the houses here a goodly number
of heads were seen, the products of re-
cent raids. In one house we tried to
barter for some of these, but through a
man who could speak Malay we learned
that, as the possessors claimed, these
people whose heads we saw had been
such notorious villains that the Dutch
gunboat last seen had brought permission
for this tribe to go and kill them. Of
course, their heads must be kept as proof
of the meritorious act. No gunboat had ,
visited the bay for years ! The heads !
were fresh.
CANOES
The raiding canoes of Pom were enor-
mous affairs, with bows decorated with
fretwork carving, in elaborate designs,
and with wooden heads which were made
to look like real ones, by having enor-
DUTCH NEW GUINEA
475
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476 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
A PAPUAN OF DOREY
In his hair may be seen the ends of the prongs of a hair comb, which is made from the
wing spines of the cassowary. Notice the space between the great and second toe. For ladders,
poles are used in which notches are cut for the toes.
DUTCH NEW GUINEA
477
ONE OF OUR BEST PAPUAN HELPERS AT DOREY
This man was a good collector and may be seen here proudly displaying his pay. A
knife, a tin can, and a key on a string he was almost as proud of as of his splendid head of
hair and the decorated bone pin which he had thrust through his nose.
478 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
MEN OF DOREY
The man on the right has in his hair the comb which is in general use among all Papuans.
It resembles a long-tined fork and is made of split bamboo, or more often of the long spine-
like feathers, which are found on the side of the cassowary where most birds have wings.
DUTCH NEW GUINEA
479
THE END VIEW OF A COMMUNAL LONG HOUSE NEAR DOREY
The decoration on the end shows the space for the separate rooms. The corridor through
the middle of the house is the common lounging place. One wonders how it is possible to use
the bridge ; the poles roll about and there is no hand rail ; still it is done, and even by young
children.
4.80 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
PAPUAN CHILDREN
The children are at home in the water at a very early age. They often paddle about alone in
tiny dug-out canoes of their own
mpus mops made of cassowary feathers
stuck to them.
A word about New Guinean canoes is
in order here. They vary among the dif-
ferent tribes as do all the other products
of their handicraft. In some places they
have a single outrigger, in others two.
At Djamna and the Humboldt Bay they
are elaborately decorated with figures
at bow and stern, and often with conven-
tional designs burned on the hull repre-
senting sharks and flying fishes. Here
again the photos show better than verbal
descriptions the way these crafts are put
together and their varying types. The
basis of all is a great hollow log prepared
with fire, and often still with the primi-
tive stone axe. To the sides of this are
sewn two strips of wood, which go to
form the gunwales. In almost every
case where the canoes are sailed, sails
made of woven pandannus leaves are
used. A tripod generally serves as a
mast among the Geelvink Bay islands.
The paddles of this region are short-han-
dled and devoid of ornamentation, while
at Humboldt Bay they are long, so that a
man may paddle standing. Here also
they are often most beautifully carved.
For weapons the bow and arrow are
general. In some places they are as elab-
orate as human ingenuity can devise, the
arrow shafts decorated with burned and
incised designs, ornamented with tufts of
feathers, often from the Birds of Para-
dise, and with tips of bone or burnt
wood. These tips are elaborately carved
with many series of barbs and are cer-
tainly savage-looking weapons.
They are not knowingly poisoned, but
we are told that they are thrust into the
body of a dead warrior and left to absorb
some of his valor. The valor is doubt-
less most effective in causing in this damp
equatorial climate swift and sure blood-
poisoning.
Spears are often used, as well as ar-
rows. Some are bamboo, like great
cheese scoops, while others are tipped
with human bones or the shin-bones of
cassowaries. Shields occur sporadically
and not many of the tribes in Dutch terri-
tory know of them. The people of Wiak
make them long and narrow for parry-
ing; they have crude designs daubed on
them with native pigments, and on top
they are surmounted with a grinning face
and mop of cassowary feathers for hair.
Daggers are only known in Humboldt
Bay. They are made of thigh bones,
usually, splintered to a sharp point on
one end, with the other end worked
DUTCH NEW GUINEA
PAPUAN CANOES
The people rest themselves by folding up; they never sit as we do. Note the tripod for
holding the mast
smooth for a handle. They also are
often beautifully carved.
The artistic sense of these people is
strongly developed, and the amount of
time and pains which will be spent in
decorating every gourd or joint of bam-
boo for household use is astonishing.
Their tools, of course, are the most prim-
itive, for of metals most of them know
nothing.
The religious life of the people is still
very imperfectly known ; here again a
great field awaits the student of ethnol-
ogy. Their methods of burial vary
greatly and are interesting, to us often
disgusting. These subjects, along with
an account of the little-known tribes at
Djamna and Humboldt Bay, will be
touched on in a subsequent paper.* The
author will feel that he has been
more than repaid for the discomforts of
this trip if he has awakened an interest
among Americans in this wonderful re-
gion— a country which, in spite of draw-
backs in its climate, its notorious un-
healthiness, and its often rather inhos-
pitable or even dangerous inhabitants,
will always remain the most interesting
region he has ever visited.
*To be published in the August number of this Magazine.
482 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
JOBI ISLAND WOMEN
Photograph taken from the ship's deck. It was a sign of great confidence for the women to
come so near; they are generally most shy
DUTCH NEW GUINEA
483
484 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
ONE; OF THE SURLY MEN OF MEOSBOENDI, WIAK ISLAND
In the boxes was the dammar gum which these people collect and which the ship's crew
pack up and take on board after it has been paid for in "trade." These people are one of the
most dangerous in the whole region to have any dealings with.
AMONG THE MAHOGANY FORESTS OF CUBA
BY WALTER D. WILCOX
AUTHOR OF "CAMPING IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES,"
CANADA," ETC.
THE ROCKIES OF
THE Bay of Cochinos, on the south
coast of Cuba, is about forty
miles west of Cienfuegos. It is
the largest protected bay in Cuba, with a
length of over 15 miles and an average
breadth of about four miles, great depth
of water, and very fair protection from
the sea, and it is surprising at the first
glance not to find a thriving port town
located here. On the contrary, this is
one of the wildest and most sparsely
populated parts of Cuba.
Until within a few years this bay was
said to be the resort of brigands and bad
characters of all kinds ; the waters were
supposedly infested with sharks and
other dangerous fish and the shores with
crocodiles, while the swampy interior -was
the reputed breeding place of innumera-
ble mosquitoes. The days of piracy are
past, and while crocodiles and sharks do
abound, no fatalities have ever occurred.
The isolation of this region, to which
may be attributed the vagueness of these
evil reports, is due to the fact that this
entire coast is hemmed in by a line of al-
most impassable swamps more than fifty
miles in length, called the Cienaga de
Zapata, which cut off communication
with the interior. Then, too, the com-
paratively new city of Cienfuegos, situ-
ated on its beautiful land-locked bay,
which Humboldt pronounced one of the
most magnificent harbors in the world,
has served as an outlet for the adjoining
region.
In connection with the purchase of a
timber tract on this bay, I had abundant
opportunities to learn many interesting
facts about the region. On the first visit
a small boat was engaged to sail from
Cienfuegos. Under the influence of a
fresh land breeze, the forty miles west-
ward along the rocky coast were run in
the night, and early the following morn-
ing the boat was well within the Bay of
Cochinos and approaching a low, flat
shore covered by a uniform expanse of
green forest. Above the tree-tops the
sky was a rosy red in the early dawn. It
was a typical midwinter day in the
tropics — the bay smooth as a mirror ; the
cool air laden with forest odors and the
perfume of flowers, while the chattering
of wild parrots could be heard from the
shore. Our captain entered a small river
or inlet and poled the boat to a convenient
landing place.
A year later, at this same spot, a land-
ing was made with a force of carpenters
and laborers and a cargo of lumber and
tools. A place was cleared in the forest
for a house, docks were built, gardens
laid out, wells dug, and eventually a per-
manent home made, comfortable enough
to house my family during the succeed-
ing eighteen months.
In all that time we were not molested
by the natives, and no case of illness oc-
curred in any member of the household.
It seems that malaria and yellow fever
are unknown among the natives of this
entire region.
HERONS, WHITE EGRETS AND CROCODILES'
The encircling shores of Cochinos Bay
are low and flat. The west shore is a
sandy beach four or five feet above the
water. This coast is often a mere strip
of dry land separating the bay from
swampy tracts and lagoons full of man-
grove trees. Herons and various wading
birds, including the white egret, sought
for its feathers, abound here in great
numbers. Hunters shoot the latter bird
by the hundreds, unfortunately in the
breeding season, because the feathers are
then at their best, and only the inaccessi-
ble nature of these lonely lagoons and
the plague of insect life prevent their
total extinction.
486
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Crocodiles likewise abound, and in the
night-time may be heard catching birds
near the water's edge. During the last
two years some eight or ten men have
been constantly employed killing croco-
diles in the depths of the swamps and
carrying on a profitable business selling
their hides. In the remote parts of the
swamp, where the great reptiles have
never been disturbed, they are easily
killed. An old hat is placed on the end
of a short stick, which is held in the left
hand and waved over the water. The
crocodile rushes blindly at the hat and is
struck a sharp blow behind the head with
a machete.
Sharks infest these shores and often
swim in the water so shallow as to be-
come half stranded on the sandy shoals.
Natives say that in the old days this bay
was a resort for pirates and slave traders,
and that the sharks were originally at-
tracted by the large numbers of dead and
dying slaves thrown overboard.
I IN THE MAHOGANY FOREST
The east shore is entirely different, to-
tally devoid of sand beaches or swampy
tracts, and is a rocky plain from five to
ten feet above sea-level, covered by a
heavy forest, which extends eastward
three or four miles to the edge of the
swamps..
The number of species of trees is very
great, and, while including such splendid
varieties as mahogany, sabicu, ebony, and
Spanish cedar, there are many other
hardwoods, probably 150 in number,
some of which are very rare or quite
unknown to experts in tropical timbers.
Some of these trees have a wood harder
than ebony, and the best steel axes are
frequently broken in felling them. Many
are fine-grained and beautifully banded
and veined with two or more colors, and
are susceptible of a high polish.
The mahogany and cedar are imposing
trees, the latter sometimes reaching a
diameter of seven feet. Their massive
branches, hung with purple and yellow
orchids, bromeliads, ferns, and other par-
asitic plants, are the resort of parrots
and other birds of brilliant plumage. In
contrast, the silent swamps present a dif-
ferent aspect. The forest is interrupted
by stretches of open prairie, by slow-
flowing streams of great depth and
clumps of heavy trees, hung with long
shrouds of gray Spanish moss or over-
run by climbing cactus, mistletoe, and
orchids, which in early spring make a gay
display of white, yellow, and purple blos-
soms. The royal palm here reaches its
maximum size, the stately trunks, sym-
metrical as Grecian columns, rising more
than a hundred feet to spread their
crowns of foliage in the glistening sun-
shine above the dark and sombre forest.
The swamp water, having general cur-
rents toward the sea and eventually es-
caping by underground channels, is clear
and perfectly wholesome, with, however,
a slight taste and color of vegetable mat-
ter. Many of these lagoons are very
picturesque, especially where long vistas
open up in the forest and display the
overhanging foliage dipping down to the
water surface. These black pools are oc-
casionally disturbed by the splash of a
crocodile or the rising of the "sevalo," a
kind of fish that comes from the sea
through subterranean passages and rivers
which drain the swamps.
The general land surface, while per-
fectly level, is rocky and the soil is very
scanty, being apparently washed down
into the numerous cracks and joints in
the rocks. It seems remarkable that trees
of great size can and do grow on such
little soil, and one often sees their long
roots spreading over the ground for
twenty yards or more in search of some
hole or crevice to descend. The soil,
however, is remarkably fertile, and such
plants as reach down deep enough to be
independent of surface conditions of
moisture and drought succeed admirably.
Bananas, limes, and oranges of delicious
flavor and quality are raised in several
places near the bay. Vegetables and
small fruits succeed only when suffi-
ciently watered, as the light, porous soil
dries out very quickly. The rocks are
entirely of coral formation, very hard
and rough on the exposed surface, but
underneath turning to a soft, yellow
AMONG THE MAHOGANY FORESTS OF CUBA 487
488
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photo by Walter D. Wilcox
A FIELD OF CORN IN A CLEARING
Six months before this picture was taken the field was covered with a dense tropical forest:
Cochinos Bay, Cuba
stone made up of shell fragments and
corals similar to existing beaches on the
western shore of the bay.
Outside of two or three poisonous
plants, these forests contain very few
dangers of any kind. The poisonous
manzanillo tree spreads its picturesque
branches out over the rocky shores and
drops its green apples into the sea. Cer-
tain fish eat these apples, and in some
cases, when caught at the critical time,
have caused fatal cases of poisoning.
The milky juice is feared by every Cuban
axeman, who will never under any cir-
cumstances fell one of these trees, a sin-
gle drop in the eye being sufficient to
cause total blindness. Snakes are abun-
dant, but universally harmless, while the
sting of Cuban scorpions and centipedes
is little worse than that of honey-bees.
One native nearly ninety years old has
spent forty-five years on his clearing in
these woods and is still strong enough to
do all his work.
THE CHANGE OF SEASONS
At the close of winter, in March and
April, the forest loses a great part of its
foliage, while some varieties of trees shed
their leaves altogether. This period
marks the close of the dry season. The
entire forest when seen from a distance
is suffused with a reddish glow, as the
old leaves fall and the new ones burst
from their buds. This is in many re-
spects the finest part of the year in Cuba,,
an uninterrupted succession of bright
sunshiny days, with an ideal temperature
both day and night. The forest revels
in a profusion of flowers, one kind of
tree succeeding another in its time of
blossoming, and the air is sweet with the
AMONG THE MAHOGANY FORESTS OF CUBA 489
Photo by Walter D. Wilcox
SEMI-PIRATICAL SEA CAPTAIN OF A TRADING SCHOONER ON THE SOUTH
COAST OF CUBA
Most of the traffic between small settlements on the south coast of Cuba is carried on
such craft
490 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
AMONG THE MAHOGANY FORESTS OF CUBA 491
scent of countless blossoms. The maja-
gua tree, famous for its green wood and
fibrous bark, from which the strongest
ropes are plaited, is brilliant with tulip-
like blossoms of fiery red color ; the baria
is hung with masses of white, and the
ruble, the so-called Cuban oak, is adorned
with clusters of delicate pink and white
flowers, resembling the mountain rhodo-
dendron. The dull hum of honey-bees
tells of the harvest of nectar, and at this
season the natives are kept busy pressing
honey and melting wax.
The variety of birds is very great at
this period, as the Florida species, driven
south by the cold of winter, have not as
yet returned to the north, and the native
birds are singing and mating. The Cuban
crows call one another with a great va-
riety of peculiar sounds and modulations,
which one could easily fancy to be a
kind of conversation among themselves,
and the parrots come in noisy flocks of
several hundreds and drive away by
their loud chattering all thought of sleep
after the earliest trace of dawn.
Emerald-colored humming birds dart
from flower to flower on the gaudy
hibiscus bushes or poise in midair amid
the pink clusters of the coral vine. Many
of the wild birds are sociable, and I have
seen four or five different kinds at one
time on or near the verandas of the
house.
MISERABLE POVERTY OF THE FEW NATIVES
The natives of this region are a mixed
race, father dark in color and with a
probable mixture of considerable negro
blood. They live in miserable houses
thatched with palm leaves, generally
without windows or other protection
from insects and weather. They are ex-
cellent woodsmen, handling the axe and
machete with great skill. They think
nothing of walking ten or fifteen miles
on the most trifling errand. Many have
small clearings where they raise bananas,
yucca, and a kind of sweet potato. These
fruits and vegetables, together with their
live stock and beehives, eked out by the
results of hunting and fishing, give them
an uncertain and miserable diet. When
they are fortunate enough to get work,
they buy provisions; but a little stock in
the cupboard is a temptation to quit
working at once. It would be difficult to
find a lower standard of diet and general
living outside of savage tribes.
From lack of care and cleanliness, the
teeth of these people decay and fall out
before middle age, and their monotonous
diet causes suffering from digestive trou-
bles. Like all Cubans, they are very fond
of pets, and it is no uncommon' thing to
see all the ordinary animals of the barn
yard — goats, pigs, turkeys, chickens,
etc.— wandering at will inside their
houses. On an iron hoop suspended
from a rafter a tame parrot may usually
be seen, while many houses have a kind
of rat-like animal, called the "jutia,"
which lives in the forest trees, tied up as
a half wild and treacherous pet. Naked
children sprawl about on the floor and
many dogs, in a state of extreme emacia-
tion from continued starvation, howl at
every passer-by and add to the general
misery. Were it not for the balmy tem-
perature and the continued sunshine and
general cheerfulness of the Cuban cli-
mate, these people would rapidly become
extinct. In such hovels, abounding in
filth and squalor, one meets with evi-
dences of genuine hospitality in marked
contrast to the surroundings. The
stranger is invited to enter, offered the
best chair, and coffee is prepared at once.
Cuban coffee is roasted in small quanti-
ties and ground just before making. A
cloth bag holds the ground coffee while
hot water is filtered through it several
times. The resulting coffee, while strong
and excessively roasted, has a very fine
aroma and flavor. Rather than be de-
prived of his coffee and cigarettes, a
Cuban would prefer to go several days
with little or no food.
In the huts of these humble people
great formality, an inheritance from the
Spanish, is observed on arriving and de-
parting. Withal there is general igno-
rance, few being able to read or write, and
their life is woefully monotonous, though
they seem light-hearted and happy, prat-
tling for hours about the friost trifling
492
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
events in their daily life. They observe
frequent holidays in connection with
church festivals, birthdays, etc., and de-
light in dancing and music, the latter
being barbaric and showing strong evi-
dence of African origin. They believe
that the moon has a great effect on the
planted seed, and sometimes one sees an
umbrella carried at night to ward off the
evil effects of moonlight.
CHARTING COCHINOS BAY
A systematic survey with plane-table
'and alidade was made, with the purpose
of preparing a chart of Cochinos Bay.
All the preliminary work was done in a
sail-boat, which proved a very tedious
and uncertain method of working. Later,
a motor boat was used, without which it
would have been impossible to make sys-
tematic soundings. It was necessary to
traverse every part of the coast on foot,
and as the entire east coast is a rocky
ledge, worn by the elements into a
rough slag-like surface, called "diente de
perro," or dog's-tooth coral, sometimes
no more than a quarter mile could be
charted in a day's work.
Three rivers enter the bay, besides
several small streams. The larger rivers
are in every case the mouths of under-
ground streams, which drain the swamps
and, breaking out near the coast, run the
last part of their course in open rivers,
called "caletas," which are deep-water
inlets or coves. These are filled with salt
water, as the tide enters and even pene-
trates underground and makes the water
brackish more than a mile inland. Only
in the height of the rainy season, when
for several months the current has a ve-
locity of four or five miles an hour, does
the water in these "caletas" become par-
tially fresh. The largest is Caleta Ro-
sario, on the east coast of the bay. It is
half a mile long and from 150 to 400 feet
wide, with a minimum depth of over six
feet, thus providing a safe refuge in
stormy weather for small schooners.
REMARKABLE DEPTH OF COCHINOS BAY
As existing charts do not show the
depth of water in Cochinos Bay, con-
siderable time was spent in gathering
sufficient data to make the work fairly
complete. A wooden reel with sounding
line was made and the first sounding
taken one-quarter mile west from Caleta
Rosario. The entire line, 900 feet in
length, was run out without reaching
bottom, and this surprising depth neces-
sitated making a stronger apparatus and
considerably reduced the number of
soundings finally taken.
When it is remembered that all the
surrounding land for probably forty
miles in every direction is a level plain,
ten or fifteen feet above sea-level at most,
the great depths of this bay are remark-
able. At one point, about the middle of
the east shore, only one-third of a mile
from the land, a depth of 1,245 ^eet was
discovered. No soundings were at-
tempted in the middle of the bay, as the
great depth of water resulted in a re-
sistance on the sounding apparatus that
made the work impracticable. From an
analysis of the soundings made, it seems
probable that the greatest depths will be
found to reach 2,500 or 3,000 feet. If
drained of water, Cochinos Bay would
appear as a deep and comparatively nar-
row valley, with canyon-like and fre-
quently precipitous walls on its eastern
side.
About ten miles due south of the bay,
there is a small island, called Cayo
Piedra, with a lighthouse visible nine
miles. From this point northwesterly to
the west side of the bay there is a long
line of shoals, which serve to inclose the
bay from the effects of southwesterly
seas. The deep-water entrance between
these reefs and the east shore is 3^
miles wide, and only in times of south-
easterly gales do heavy seas sweep into
the bay ; but even then their force is rap-
idly d'issipated, till at the upper parts
their influence is rarely felt. Great
depth of water and coral rocks make
poor anchorages, as a general rule; but
with local knowledge of good ground or
by use of fixed anchors, ships can ride
out the severest gales in the upper part of
Cochinos Bay as safely as in a com-
pletely land-locked harbor. There are no
AMONG THE MAHOGANY FORESTS OF CUBA 493
492
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
events in their daily life. They observe
frequent holidays in connection with
church festivals, birthdays, etc., and de-
light in dancing and music, the latter
being barbaric and showing strong evi-
dence of African origin. They believe
that the moon has a great effect on the
planted seed, and sometimes one sees an
umbrella carried at night to ward off the
evil effects of moonlight.
CHARTING COCHINOS BAY
A systematic survey with plane-table
'and alidade was made, with the purpose
of preparing a chart of Cochinos Bay.
All the preliminary work was done in a
sail-boat, which proved a very tedious
and uncertain method of working. Later,
a motor boat was used, without which it
would have been impossible to make sys-
tematic soundings. It was necessary to
traverse every part of the coast on foot,
and as the entire east coast is a rocky
ledge, worn by the elements into a
rough slag-like surface, called "diente de
perro," or dog's-tooth coral, sometimes
no more than a quarter mile could be
charted in a day's work.
Three rivers enter the bay, besides
several small streams. The larger rivers
are in every case the mouths of under-
ground streams, which drain the swamps
and, breaking out near the coast, run the
last part of their course in open rivers,
called "caletas," which are deep-water
inlets or coves. These are filled with salt
water, as the tide enters and even pene-
trates underground and makes the water
brackish more than a mile inland. Only
in the height of the rainy season, when
for several months the current has a ve-
locity of four or five miles an hour, does
the water in these "caletas" become par-
tially fresh. The largest is Caleta Ro-
sario, on the east coast of the bay. It is
half a mile long and from 150 to 400 feet
wide, with a minimum depth of over six
feet, thus providing a safe refuge in
stormy weather for small schooners.
REMARKABLE DEPTH OF COCHINOS BAY
As existing charts do not show the
depth of water in Cochinos Bay, con-
siderable time was spent in gathering
sufficient data to make the work fairly
complete. A wooden reel with sounding
line was made and the first sounding
taken one-quarter mile west from Caleta
Rosario. The entire line, 900 feet in
length, was run out without reaching
bottom, and this surprising depth neces-
sitated making a stronger apparatus and
considerably reduced the number of
soundings finally taken.
When it is remembered that all the
surrounding land for probably forty
miles in every direction is a level plain,
ten or fifteen feet above sea-level at most,
the great depths of this bay are remark-
able. At one point, about the middle of
the east shore, only one-third of a mile
from the land, a depth of 1,245 ^eet was
discovered. No soundings were at-
tempted in the middle of the bay, as the
great depth of water resulted in a re-
sistance on the sounding apparatus that
made the work impracticable. From an
analysis of the soundings made, it seems
probable that the greatest depths will be
found to reach 2,500 or 3,000 feet. If
drained of water, Cochinos Bay would
appear as a deep and comparatively nar-
row valley, with canyon-like and fre-
quently precipitous walls on its eastern
side.
About ten miles due south of the bay,
there is a small island, called Cayo
Piedra, with a lighthouse visible nine
miles. From this point northwesterly to
the west side of the bay there is a long
line of shoals, which serve to inclose the
bay from the effects of southwesterly
seas. The deep-water entrance between
these reefs and the east shore is 3^2
miles wide, and only in times of south-
easterly gales do heavy seas sweep into
the bay ; but even then their force is rap-
idly d'issipated, till at the upper parts
their influence is rarely felt. Great
depth of water and coral rocks make
poor anchorages, as a general rule; but
with local knowledge of good ground or
by use of fixed anchors, ships can ride
out the severest gales in the upper part of
Cochinos Bay as safely as in a com-
pletely land-locked harbor. There are no
AMONG THE MAHOGANY FORESTS OF CUBA 493
494
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
exposed rocks or dangerous reefs within
the bay itself, except immediately ad-
jacent to the shore, and ships can safely
enter this bay on the darkest nights, hug-
ging the east shore within ico yards if
necessary, in perfect security.
A simpler way of getting an idea of
the depth of water in Cochinos Bay
would be to imagine the water level to
fall 25 feet. This would hardly change
the position or form of the east coast.
The west shore, however, would advance
about a quarter of a mile at the upper
end of the bay and gradually increase to
two miles at Punta del Padre, and then
run ten miles seaward in a southeasterly
direction to Cayo Piedra, making the west
coast about twenty-five miles in length.
The bay would then appear a very long
and narrow, almost land-locked, body of
very deep water. The tide averages less
than eighteen inches. West of the south
end of the bay there are vast lagoons,
with innumerable small islands "entirely
covered with mangrove trees. The water
varies from eighteen inches to several
feet in depth, and my launch being of
light draft, it was found practicable to ex-
plore these, island seas without difficulty.
Charts do not correctly show the great
extent nor true form of this interesting
region.
WONDERS OF TROPICAL MARINE LIFE
Among the beautiful shells of the west-
coast sand beaches were pieces of spongy
volcanic rock, purple and green in color,
which may have had their origin in the
eruptions in Martinique.
As may be imagined, the water in this
deep bay is of the utmost purity and
clearness. The color is blue, rivaling
that of the Mediterranean, and the bot-
tom may be clearly seen in forty or fifty
feet of water. The wonders of tropical
marine life afford a never-ending source
of delightful study. On bright, calm
mornings one can look down through
fathoms of crystal water and see the sun-
light sparkling on snow-white beds of
coral sand. Among branching corals,
Neptune's cups, sponges, and purple sea-
fans, fish of many strange forms and
colors may be seen gliding to and fro,
apparently within grasp of the hand—
the blue llora, the red and green parrot-
fish, the red-snapper, and the spotted
cherna. On moonlight nights, moving
rapidly through the water in a launch,
one feels as though sailing over an en-
chanted sea of crystal, where every rip-
ple is faintly outlined with phosphores-
cent fire.
The bay is a fisherman's paradise.
The rapacious and dangerous picua is
caught by trolling from rapidly moving
sailing craft, but still fishing in deep
water gives better results. Sharks often
bite fish off the hooks before they can be
landed, unless the line is taken in rapidly.
Sea turtles of several varieties and the
shell-bearing tortoise abound, the Cuban
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